THE GRANBY House Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT) ruling is in – and it’s good news for owners.
De Roo believes that fighting the LVT instead of listening to the residents and simply improving the maintenance will have cost GNC more than £130,000 plus legal fees over the last eighteen months.
Not only will they get a backdated refund of excessive service charges but building management company, Guinness Northern Counties (GNC), has also been ordered to pay more than £46,000 into the building’s Reserve Fund for window painting that was ruled unnecessary.
For context on the Granby House debacle see here (7 March), here (8 April) and here (18 July).
It’s a significant victory for the leaseholders and long-term resident, Martijn de Roo, who led the fight. He told Confidential: “It’s a very good outcome. We are all very happy.”
An understatement perhaps, some leaseholders could end up having almost £2,000 refunded as well as seeing their on-going monthly charges reduced.
“It should be a lesson to all management companies that they cannot continue to take money from leaseholders for services that they do not provide," said de Roo. “It has been a long eighteen months to get to this point but we are very pleased that the tribunal panel listened to our points and acted accordingly.
“There have been some key issues raised and won but getting a refund of the full cost of the window painting, a job that should never have been done in the first place, is an amazing result.”
Granby House
Other costs reduced include the caretakers salary of £17,024, which should be halved given he only spends half his time at Granby House.
Invoices for City Response, GNC’s own repair company, were reduced by £1,336.
The owners also got £360 back for a roller shutter on the basement car park.
However, they're still required to pay for the caretaker’s phone and problems with the front door, which residents claimed was a result of poor repair, but was ruled to be more likely 'over enthusiastic use' by residents.
The tribunal panel paid a visit to the Grade II listed building before the first hearing. The report says:
“The annual fee charged per apartment ranges from £218.20 to £253.45.
“Mr de Roo accepted that these fees would be within the range which would be reasonable for a good quality residential development in central Manchester managed to a high standard.
"We Agree with this.
“However, we also agree with the applicants’ view that the building has not been managed to a sufficiently high standard to justify management fees falling within this range.”
Ouch.
Mr de Roo outside Granby House
The report cites the style and quality of the building’s common parts, in particular stating the standard of furnishing, decoration and cleanliness is relatively poor with damp and mould in the basement which has not been attended to.
It says the finish of doors, door handles and cable conduits are dated and/or unsightly and that GNC’s reaction time to management issues is too slow with not enough done to address the serious issue of leaks.
Confidential likes the judgement’s language...
“In his evidence to the tribunal, Mr Mundy (From GNC) commented that the applicants expect more of the management service than Guinness expects to provide. This may well be true.
“However, the problem with this argument is that Guinness has also been charging for a higher standard of management services that, apparently, it expects to provide.”
Ouch again.
So it reduced the service charge backdated to 2007 and suggested GNC bear this in mind when they finally get around to setting the 2013/2014 figure.
De Roo believes that fighting the LVT instead of listening to the residents and simply improving the maintenance will have cost GNC more than £130,000 plus legal fees over the last eighteen months.
GNC now have 28 days to appeal. It will be interesting to see if they do given that several other GNC managed blocks are preparing their own LVT evidence.
When the celebrations of the LVT victory have died down, Granby House leaseholders plan to go for a Right To Manage, meaning they can appoint their own managing agents.
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