Leaseholders to bear full cost of fire safety work
Southwark leaseholders are to bear the full cost of fire safety improvements after a tribunal ruled in favour of the council.
The council is carrying out work to Perronet House, after being ordered to improve safety by the fire brigade. But the leaseholders argued the work went beyond the fire brigade’s demands, and they should only pay for the portion deemed essential.
The fire brigade issued enforcement notices to Southwark council on three tower blocks after a fire in a high-rise block where six people died on 3 July this year.
The council decided to do more work to Perronet House, a major part of which is rewiring because the electrics are more than 40 years old.
Leaseholders said they were originally given estimates of around £7,500 a household but this figure had gone up to £15,600 in a recent quote. They believed it was not necessary to do the works immediately and they should have been consulted.
But Frances Burton and Frank Coffey at the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal decided to require the council to consult fully now ‘would be impractical given the works are so advanced’ and that if the leaseholders did not pay the charges it would ‘cause significant hardship to the borough’.
‘The excess over the allowable rechargeable costs in the case of there being no dispensation would have to be met from other borough funds which would also ultimately mean wider prejudice to other projects or other borough residents through rising costs in other contexts,’ chair Ms Burton wrote in the ruling.
But she added: ‘The manner in which the London borough of Southwark handled this matter is not entirely to be praised, since greater transparency and less confusing information to residents at an earlier stage would have been welcome.’
The leaseholders said they would not appeal against the decision but work towards another challenge against the reasonableness of the costs. They commissioned a firm to come up with an estimate of how much the re-wiring work in the block should cost, which came to about half the council’s figure, they said.
Richard Reynolds, who represented the leaseholders at the tribunal, said: ‘The verdict was disappointing, especially since their justification goes well beyond the context of this building and excuses the council’s need to charge based on their costs elsewhere in the borough.
‘This is an astonishing admission that leaseholders in council buildings are actually paying an additional council tax rather than just costs associated with their block. Money should be ring fenced.’
A Southwark council spokesperson said: ‘We know that it is a difficult situation to be placed in and we do sympathise with leaseholders at receiving bills for works with little warning – we can normally avoid this happening using our usual consultation process.
‘But the safety of all residents is our highest priority and these are crucial fire safety works.’
The local authority will shoulder the costs initially and not bill leaseholders until next October, he added, and they can pay the bill over 36 months.
Inside Housing is running a campaign on fire safety. For more information see our campaign page
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Readers' comments (4)
| 05/12/2009 9:55 pm
Another kick in the teeth for RTB leaseholders. In an earlier IH article:
"Leaseholders fear safety bills in wake of fatal fire" at
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/story.aspx?storycode=6506084
We see "Gill Davies, director of environment and housing.... said the leaseholders would only pay for the work in their flats and had the right to refuse it." which seemed unlikely at the time. Now we see it was all a pack of lies after all!
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Peter | 07/12/2009 10:31 am
Clearly this is a terrible blow to the leaseholders but I couldn't see how a Judge could have gone any other way because of the safety concerns.
Nevertheless, the Council could have been slightly gracious and offset some of costs for their failure for not addressing the problem prior to the fire.
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| 11/12/2009 6:43 pm
Actually the article is somewhat misleading. The case is now up on the RPTS site at
http://www.rpts.gov.uk/Files/2009/December/001053FC.pdf
The LVT was brought by LB Southwark, not the leaseholders, and was brought under S20ZA LTA1985 to get the nod from the LVT to do the works without going through the usual S20 consultation process. Unless the council got the nod to proceed under S20ZA from the LVT, they would been able to recharge at all. Any RSL doing emergency works would need this approval from an LVT. The council came fully armed with a barrister and the leaseholders had no legal representation; always a bad idea at LVT.
This LVT did not determine whether the proposed works were reasonable under S19 or payable under S27A. The leaseholders will be able to challenge by bringing their own LVT and contesting under these grounds once the bills are issued. Speak to LEASE and the College of Law and don't turn up without a barrister!
Unfortunately tower blocks are very expensive to maintain and renew and doubtless many of these old blocks (especially those of flat panel construction) are already beyond their designed shelf life. It used to be the case that mortgage companies would not lend on RTB properties that were in a bldg of more than 5 stories due to such future costs being more than the value of the asset. All that went of the window in the mortgage boom years of course. The sad fact is that RTB flats in tower blocks can turn into a costly mistake for the lessee due to cases just as this...
ILAG
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Frank | 16/04/2010 9:46 pm
Leaseholders of the two Southwark tower blocks Regina Point and Columbia Point, behind Canada Water tube station, were all today issued with £7,500 estimate bills for fire safety works.
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