Notification for the new management fees arrived today. Actually it arrived yesterday, but I avoided opening it until today as I was in a good mood. I wanted to stay that way.

As expected the letter was a poke in the eye. The old management fee was £57, 000 based on 12.5 percent of services provided.

The new management fee will be £239, 730.This equates to a management overhead of over 52 percent, a truly remarkable figure.

No information is given on how the figures have been arrived at. Just a breakdown of where costs have occurred.

The letter seems full of spin. For example in the section entitled “Comments and observations received from leasholders,” is the comment:

I don’t see any justification to this proposed increase and do not agree with it.

Has the answer

In accordance with the terms of your lease, Stevenage Borough Council is entitled to recover its costs for service provided.

A classic straw man argument.

The actual questions most people will be asking are:

I think this is too high, can you justify it?

What can I do if I still disagree?

No answers to these questions.

Hits to this site are the highest recorded, many coming from Google to the Leaseholders Forums post. Comments have been left discussing what to do.

I have decided to set up an online forum so people looking for information or just wanting to vent can have their say. Maybe it will become a place to organize a response.

We still have the major works to pay for.

I met Councillor Brian Underwood at a seasonal get together with the board of Stevenage Homes just before Christmas. He is one of the local councillors for Bedwell, which is the ward The Towers is in.

He is also on the town’s Planning and Development Committee so if any one knows what is happening with the Stevenage Town Centre Regeneration scheme, you would expect it to be him.

He could not give any firmer date for the demolition of The Towers than the 5 years minimum that was given to us by Stevenage Homes. But he did say that Stevenage Borough Council are going to bring forward new plans soon with fewer apartments.

How this will affect the overall regeneration scheme is unclear. As I understand it, the first stage of the scheme was to be the building of a luxury apartment complex at the south end of the shopping precinct, where The Towers now stands. The sale of these properties was going to finance the regeneration of the rest of the Town Centre. This is the ‘public interest’ justification for the compulsory purchase order on our homes.

Councillor Underwood also said that the Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) decision to stay in Southgate House has no affect on the regeneration scheme as the redevelopment was never going to include this building.

We chatted about how the credit crunch had affected other developments in the town. He said that recently completed apartments were not selling. With housing associations making up a significant proportion of the few sales that there have been. Something I have heard from several sources now.

Hardly surprising, even if people can get a mortgage, most are holding off buying in the expectation that prices will continue to fall.

Previous in this series

I went to a leaseholders’ forum on Thursday. Stevenage Homes at last had some information on what was going on with the demolition of The Towers. Previously they have had no more idea than anyone else.

I was given a sheet with the following points on it:

• An outline Planning Application was submitted by developers Stevenage Regeneration Ltd in November 2007, which includes the demolition of The Towers.

• The Planning Application is still under consideration by Stevenage Borough Council, and is likely to be decided in 2009.

• Even if Planning Permission is granted in 2009, work on The Towers would be unlikely to start for at least 5 years at the very earliest.

• The options for residents of The Towers are unchanged — the developers have indicated that they will negotiate a private sale with leaseholders if the scheme goes ahead, and will facilitate discussions between Tenants and Stevenage Homes to identify housing need, and provide appropriate replacement accommodation.

With a phone number for any further queries.

That is the first information I have has as to when they are going to demolish my home in three years. Meanwhile no one can sell because of planning blight. That will be eight years minimum from the time we were first told that The Towers may be demolished, to the time I can move.

I wonder if they intend to keep the old Edward the Confessor pub as a show room for the whole of the next five years?

Someone obviously expects to make a great deal of money from knocking down my home to build luxury flats.

Update