Posted by Stefan on January 1, 2008, 10:21 am, in reply to "some maths on service charges"

Let's revive this post. It shows quite nicely what people stated 6 months ago re service charges. What happened? The Wheelhouse SC went up by 76% in 2007 compared to the previous year. BWFL explained that this is an execptional year and unexpected costs (roof, lift, leaks ...) came up. The 2007 bill did not only show Service Charge. It had additional entries for: Special levy, Deficit for Year, another Special levy and Reserve Fund Contribution. Most people got extremely frustrated that no reserves were available and we had to swallow the 76% bill. The only thing that stopped me from refusing the claim was the statement from the directors that this is a one off in 2007. QUOTE We do not have a target as such, but we do make every effort to keep costs down (we would like them below 2005 levels!). Our target is to maintain the quality of BW for the lowest spend. As has been posted many times already, this has been a particularly difficult year for the estate as a couple of large expenditure items outside the scope of the normal maintenance schedule have depleted the reserves of the estate as a whole and some individual blocks, the Wheelhouse being the hardest-hit block. We hope not to have another year like it but we cannot say that next year service charges will decrease by X% because the nature of unexpected expenditure is that it is unexpected! UNQUOTE Now guess what? My service charge bill for 2008 shows only the usual ground rent and Service Charge. The value for service charge equals the total of all extra charges from the previous 2007 bill. In other words: The exeptional +76% Service charge from 2007 became the new standard service charge in 2008. This is totally unacceptable. I will NOT pay this bill. I will pay the amount from 2006 and nothing else. I could freak out seeing how the financials of this estate are managed. We learned that there are "good" years and "bad" years in terms of estate costs. But where is the money from the good years then? How come that if a screw falls off in one block we got hit by a special levy because there are no reserves to cover that? What kind of a forecasting you call that? Have you seen what happened to the Chart house guys? Same thing. The life time of the lift was well known. Were there any reserves build up for the lift during that time? No! Special levy is the new magic keyword. And you can bet that this horrendous bill with the special levy in Chart house will become the standard service charge in the next chart house bill. And the other blocks? I saw Mike's stats for Slipway and they did not look too bad. But mind you that there were no mayor works... yet. I guess every block will get this problem as soon as repairs come up. Again this kind of financial management is totally unprofessional and unacceptable. I would like to know where the money from the good years went and I would like to have an independent accountant to investigate the financials of BWFL. I don't mind the extra fees for this if it helps to stop this desaster. Forecast for Wheelhouse shows 51800 each year until 2012 for the lift so I get the impression that this madness will go on for quite a few years. May I ask people (especiall from Wheel) for their opinion? I like to: - cut the SC bill to 2006 value and only pay this amount - get independent advise and check the BWFL books Any suggestions are highly apreciated. Thanks Stefan

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