Posted by claire (director's hat on) on December 24, 2007, 1:52 pm, in reply to "Re: Managment fees from R&R"

ST, we have certainly not gone down this route with disregard for the effect it may have on leaseholders. Since the problems with the Chart lift came to light, we have looked at various solutions but it turns out that because of the way the lifts operate, full replacement is the only course available. Estate reserves are fairly low at the moment due to various costly events, in partcular the gym works that have recently been undertaken. Our preference would be to borrow the money to spread the burden over a number of years. However, after exploring various financing options we have discovered that this is not a viable option. As Andy said further up this thread, we cannot secure the loan and an unsecured loan would be prohibitively expensive - and leave leasholders paying more. As for the general level of service charges, before the AGM we obtained some comparables from other local estates and found that the service charge levels here are at the market level for the facilities that we have (estate office, gym, etc). Unfortunately, wherever you live (freehold or leasehold) there will be unanticipated expenses and some years will be more costly than others. The directors urge all Chart residents not to withhold service charge monies. This money is needed for the functioning of the estate and in accordance with the terms of the lease, we may take legal action to recover unpaid charges. This is not something we ever want to do, but if everyone stopped paying we would find ourselves unable to maintain the estate or pay the staff.

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