Posted by PatrickW on July 26, 2007, 5:07 pm, in reply to "Re: Response to Charles"

Two points - on building up reserves: the options were (a) charge more in the past to build up reserves on the chance that what has happened would (and face as many complaints that the service charges were unnecessarily high, what do they need all that money for, better cross that bridge when we come to it, etc., etc.) (b) do what the Directors did do, with the outcome we have experienced (c) keep regular service charge increases smoothed out and face even more unpredictable ad hoc charges to meet emergencies (d) not do the maintenance and repairs at all. But there's no way out of paying for work to be done. And on the plumbing inspections, I think (I don't have my lease in front of me) there's a reserve power for freeholders to have access to inspect for things like that anyway, which BWFL have yet to enforce. It would have been a bit more reassuring to have some precise figures on how many claims there have been and for how much, and it's another matter if Planet have in fact been paid upfront rather than as the jobs have been done: but the principle of requiring the inspections to be made, and charging them to the service charge seems perfectly sound to me.

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