© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
This month Jane Bayliss recalls some of the trials and tribulations her block managers have faced in the past when it comes to carrying out refurbishments (and justifying the fees) in her seaside block of flats.
‘Vot ’ave ve done to deserve zis?’ the indignant Middle European tones of Mrs Ponsonby wail down the phone. ‘£10 more zis quarter for maintenance!’ It’s all been explained in the annual budget, and Mrs Ponsonby is a rich widow. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve this, Mrs Ponsonby – why do you deserve to have fellow-residents working for you for nothing? And what’s £10 to you? Are you worried about depriving the donkey rescue charity when you depart?’ is the reply that springs to mind, but is suppressed.
Residents of Seagull Towers pay considerably less in maintenance charges than most similar blocks in Gullscliff-on-Sea – about £1,000 a year, including buildings insurance. Getting the quarterly maintenance payment in is not the problem it can be in blocks with a less stable population. This is not to say there have never been problems. The Old Bill, irascible ex-director in the penthouse flat, remembers 25 years of the comings and goings in the Towers since his post-retirement arrival (‘24 people have died here since Dotty and I came. 25, if you count visitors’). He’s told me a thing or two.
There was the retired colonial living mainly abroad who routinely objected to the cost of all works, but eventually paid up after he had made everyone’s life a misery with furious airmail letters back and forth between him and the board of Seagull Towers. Then the much more determined Mrs Jarvis refused to pay her share of the window-replacement project and caused the Towers’ solicitors to seek counsel’s opinion on the subject of Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act. That had cost the company a few hundred pounds, wretched woman, the Old Bill said – but she was right in law, the board had not followed the correct procedure, and good old George Potts, who’d assured everyone she was wrong, had been so shaken he’d resigned from the board.
Even I remember with a shudder the protracted dispute four years ago for another big refurbishment project and the hefty bill for legal advice that followed from Shingle and Samphire. The board then had also failed to follow Section 20. Two residents who had been abroad refused to pay because they had had no time to comment on a payment per flat of nearly £5,000, and Seagull Towers was split down the middle as to whether they should pipe down and pay up, or the board should acknowledge and rectify its failings. Contracts were held up, people didn’t speak to each other, and it took the subsequent board (including me) six months of hard work and persuasion to sort it all out.
I am now convinced of the merits of following legal procedures, however tedious and unnecessary they may seem when, after all, everyone knows each other and everyone has a share in the freehold. Legally, of course, there is no question that the Landlord and Tenant legislation affects blocks like ours just as much as those where residents do not own the freehold. We learned that the hard way.
Today we are not taking any chances. Quarterly maintenance payment demands have just gone out, complete with the summary of tenants’ rights and obligations now required every quarter by law.
‘We cannot accept this shocking waste of paper!’ declared Mr and Mrs Green, our recycling activists. ‘Vot vill zis cost?’ asked Mrs Ponsonby.
Well, you can’t please everyone, and nowhere is that more frequently illustrated than in a block of flats.