|
|
 |
| |
Doug Goldring |
Court bonanza for home owners
A LANDMARK judgement has left Islington Council facing the prospect of paying out millions of pounds to homeowners.
The Lands Tribunal – the highest legal body for dealing with housing disputes – has ruled the council failed to give one Highbury leaseholder enough information about the work being done on her flat.
Because the council failed to submit the information, Lucy Shehata Abdel-Malek, from Brancaster House, in Corsica Street, will get more than £10,000 worth of work for next to nothing.
Now the judgement could leave the Town Hall wide open for similar claims from Islington’s 11,000 council homeowners paying sky-high service charge bills.
But there are fears that if the council has to make bumper payouts it will leave less money to carry out refurbishment works.
The case arose from a 2003 tender to carry out “cyclical repairs, enhancements and window replacement” on four Highbury council-owned blocks, including Brancaster House.
The total fee from contractor Allenbuild Ltd was £556,000 and Ms Abdel-Malek received a bill for her portion of the works for £10,128.
Maintenance is being undertaken on estates and council-owned properties across the borough to bring them up to the government’s Decent Homes Standard, with some leaseholders facing service charge bills of £30,000.
Everything is overseen by Homes for Islington (HFI), the company set up in 2003 to manage the borough’s housing stock and administer a £157 million government loan.
Ms Abdel-Malek asked for detailed information on the tenders for the work and estimates for the work itself, but the paperwork and data provided was piecemeal.
Her case could now be used as precedent by the borough’s leaseholders to drive down their bills, although HFI dispute this.
Lands Tribunal member Andrew Trott, dismissing Islington’s appeal, saying in his judgement there was “a lack of clarity” over estimates for works.
Doug Goldring, HFI’s director of operations, said: “The decision made by the Lands Tribunal recently related specifically to a case that HFI was appealing following a decision by the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal. We do not anticipate that this will have a wider impact on re-charging for capital works to leaseholders or affect any charges previously made.” |
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments: |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
