I was not going to mention services charges or anything about Stevenage Homes again on this blog. I’ve set up Stevenage Leaseholders Online just to moan about them. But I had to share this.

Stevenage Homes have at last replied to my query. The email arrived on the 9th March 2010. I first enquired 13 November 2009.

After nearly four months of silence, two weeks after launching Stevenage Leaseholders Online I receive an email from Michael Olawepo. It was flagged high priority (you have to laugh).

With no apology for the months it took to respond, Mr Olawepo gets straight to the point. He’s complaining. I had said that “Stevenage Homes have cancelled some recent forums due to lack of interest”. Mr Olawepo:

At the end of the leasehold forum of 12 August 2009, which you attended, it was agreed that the date of the next meeting was to be confirmed, and this was noted in the minutes of the meeting. The earlier proposed meeting for 21 October was not cancelled but postponed/rescheduled for 25 November 2009, which you attended. And it was at this meeting that it was further proposed that the meeting of 9 December 2009 would be cancelled as there was only a fortnight between the dates. It was also noted by leaseholders that a meeting in December would not be well attended due to the holidays. It was then motioned that no further meeting be held until April 2010 as the fourth meeting of the financial year 2009/10.

All leaseholders present including yourself agreed to this arrangement as noted in the minutes of the meeting. I also refer you to the terms of reference of the leasehold forum which states there will be at least four general meetings of the Forum in any year.
Dates of meetings held in 2009/10 are as follows;
(1) 15th April, (2) 17th June, (3) 12th August, (4) 25th November.

In view of the decisions of those present at these meetings the blog is an unfair and incorrect representation of the facts.

So, anyone who didn’t skim the above three paragraphs now has a fair and correct representation of the facts.

To me, a typical leaseholder, which meetings Stevenage Homes cancelled last year, which meetings they moved, what was said at which meeting, these things are trivial. This is why my memory of them is imperfect.

To me, a typical leaseholder, why Stevenage Homes was paying out £3000 to on fire alarm call out for The Towers is important. Because I have to pay part of the bill.

Simples!

At least I got some kind of response to my questions.

I appear to have rattled someone’s cage.

stevenage leaseholders online

I created Stevenage Leaseholders Online because people were coming to Breathing In from Google on a search for “Stevenage Homes management fees”.

Leaseholders are annoyed with Stevenage Homes for raising the management fees. Some are seeing a 500% increase.

My original thought was to provide space to air grievances, maybe organize a response. So I set up some Discussion Forums. The first time I have tried this. It should be interesting.

The next question is, “How should I publicize the site?” It is already sixith of a Google search on “Stevenage Leaseholder.” Breathing In is third on such a search.

But maybe I should try to reach out more.

I’m fairly happy with the site. But there’s always a play off when going live, between being timely and being perfect.

There’s at least one bug on the site. When your resize the browser (ie6 or ie7), the top menu does not resize properly. Annoying, but as I’m using a free theme, I can’t complain too much.

If you are having this problem my advice is switch to Firefox, or any other half decent modern browser!

Do drop by, say hello and have your say.

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.

November forums are usually well attended. It’s just after the service charge bill goes out. It is usually full of pissed off leaseholders wanting to know why the bills are so much more than the estimates.

This year my bill was actually less than the estimate. Clever! That’s one way to keep people happy. Just as long as they don’t compare this years bill with one from five years ago.

As well as the usual complaints about anti-social behaviour etc, there were a couple of issues which will no doubt reappear in the future

One was Major Works. Stevenage Homes have a grant from central government to carry out a major works on the property they own. Leaseholders will have to pay a share of any work carried out to the block they live in This is causing many people problems. I will cover this in detail later.

We also looked again at the proposed new management fees. Tempers became frayed at the last meeting when we were told we are likely to face big increases.

Stevenage Homes gave a presentation on the methodology they are going to use to calculate the fees. It went down quite well. When they get back with the actual costs, I suspect things will become lively again.

Interesting figures from the meeting: Stevenage Homes manage 4082 flats, of which 1297 are leasehold (31.8%). This is much higher than I expected.

Out of the possible 1297 leaseholders, only between 20 and 40 attend the forums. Stevenage Homes are considering halting them as they are not a cost effective way of communicating. I thought maybe an on-line forum might be a suitable replacement.

I might even consider hosting one myself

They normally just issue a bill detailing the actual costs. But they are obliged in law to provide a break down if requested.

the man, the place

The last couple of years I have requested a breakdown and successfully challenged some of the costs.

Last year, there were a lot of extra charges to do with fire doors. It took over three months to resolve. I don’t think they ever found the receipts for the work carried out.

This year there was a new process in place. Things are supposed to have improved. It’s started out badly.

I asked for the breakdown on 29th September and I was told that they had been “inundated with queries regarding the actuals.” I eventually received the breakdown on October 23rd.

The latest “repair” bill includes over £3000 for responses to fire alarms. This is a considerable increase on last year.

As far as I am aware there were no fires in the block, so all these alarms were either false alarms or the results of faults in the system.

I raised the following questions:

• Why there is such large increase over last years costs.
• Why there are sometimes multiple invoices for the same incident.
• Why one incident cost £1043.93, when the usual cost is between £80 – £280

I have received a reply, saying my enquiry has been passed on to the manager, Michael Olawepo.

He’s the guy who wants to increase our management fee by 700%.

Hi Tim

As mentioned at the last meeting, the charge of £1177.41 is going to be removed from all leaseholders (pro rata) repairs charge. I am currently waiting for my manager to advise me with regard to the cost of the fire door to the electrical cupboard (£2428). He is investigating the cost of the door for me.

The removal of the first item will result in a credit of approx £26 to each leaseholders service charge account. Hopefully I will receive information relating to the second item under query before I go on annual leave next Wednesday. However if I am not in a position to give a final amount to credit to your account, it would be acceptable for you to withhold at least £26 from the amount due on the understanding that this will be resolved during April.

As you can see I’ve copied Angelina Romano from income maximisation in to this email so that she is aware of the situation and will not chase leaseholders if they withhold some of their service charges as stated above.

I will be in touch as soon as I receive my manager’s comments.

Regards
Anne Hensley

So that is probably £52 back from the extra money levied. Which is just over half.

The thing I found most surprising about this is that the procurement department could not justify these costs. I am pretty sure if we went to a tribunal they would have to do so, or we could refuse to pay anything.

It all sounds a bit chaotic at Stevenage Homes / Borough Council at the moment.

At least we can withhold payment until April, at least according to one part of Stevenage Homes we can.

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In December I queried several of the items listed by Stevenage Homes as repairs on The Towers, but have yet to here anything useful back.

When I was at the leaseholders’ meeting on Feb. 18, I had a word with Anne Hensley.

She apologised very nicely about not answering my email, and not getting back to me sooner. Stevenage homes are undergoing some kind of external audit, which is taking up a lot of time.

Anne did tell me that one of the items on the list was a mistake and so will be removed.

She finally managed to get a receipt from the procurement department which showed that they did indeed paid £2500 for the door. But as they only appear to be paying £500 for fire doors elsewhere and no one seems able to justify the extra cost, maybe the cost will not be passed onto us.

I suggested that I could get an external quote for a fire door, but she did not think that was necessary.

I still have not heard back from Stevenage Homes notifying me of the amount the service charge has been reduced by. The account is supposed to be settled at the end of this month.

I will have to email Anne again to see where this is going.

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Update

This note from Tenancy Advisor Danielle Whittaker, warns:

It has been brought to my attention that there is an ever increasing amount of dog mess accumulating in the grounds of the above block. This problem if left unchecked it may result in a problem when grass cutting commences which would result in the grounds of the block not being maintained fully.

So anyone who has a pet is reminded to clean up any mess they leave. The note continues:

Failure for this problem to cease will result in a clean up at an additional charge to all the residents in the block.

Now this would appear to be new. Normally only the leaseholders get the surcharges in their annual “repair” bill. Apparently there is no way to charge tenants for extra costs incurred. Hence these threats making very little difference.

We are then asked:

If you see another resident allowing their pet to mess in the communal areas please contact me … so that the appropriate action can be taken.

So we are all now Working for The Man.

But the actual cost of repairs usually exceeds this estimate. This year I queried several of the items listed.

I have been getting no where fast with this, no one else in the block appears to care too much about these large repair bills. Perhaps they have given up trying to do something about it.

The story so far

gold plated?

October 2008
I receive the certificate of actual costs for the service charge on my flat. As usual, the actual cost for repairs (£281.46) is significantly greater than the estimated cost (£201.88).

That corresponds to an annual repair bill for the block of £14073 instead of £10094. Over 40 percent out, and you have got to admit, those figures look suspiciously rounded.

On Oct. 27, 2008, I phone and ask for a breakdown of the “repairs”, which are sent to me on Oct. 29.

November 2008
On Nov. 4 I receive a letter telling me how I am expected to pay the extra costs incurred. The want the matter all sorted out by the end of this financial year.

December 2008
I try to match items on the list to work carried out in the block. I query some of the costs in an email to Anne Hensley on Dec. 7.

I received a reply from Anne on Dec. 9 saying:

Hi Tim

Thank you for your email. I will try to obtain further information on the items you have listed and come back to you.

Regards
Anne Hensley

January 2009
I receive a statement of account and a note reminding me that if I do not settle the account by Mar. 31, 2009 it could result in me losing my home. It gives a number to call if I want to, “discuss my account in more detail” with the Income Maximisation Team.

Not having heard back from Anne, I sent a follow up email on Jan. 19, 2009 saying:

Hi Ann,

Is there any further information on these doors?

Regards
Tim

So far no reply.

February 2009
I tried to contact other leaseholders in the block to see if they have been doing anything about any of this.

I get one response, from Denys. He is chasing other issues at the moment. There are quite a few it must be said. I will blog about them in due course.

Next week I will phone Stevenage Homes to see where we are with these doors.

I will also contact the Income Maximisation Team, as they sound so helpful.

Previous in this series
Update

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.

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