Seagull Towers was not the happiest seaside perch when I arrived there. Battle lines had been drawn up on a series of unresolved problems. The freehold had been purchased 25 years earlier but no one had had the energy to carry the task through and modernise the leases that were drawn up in the late 1960s, and they were now lacking certain features of importance to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Originally they had permitted subletting, but half now had deeds of variation prohibiting it as a result of a previous board’s efforts. It was a silly situation that had arisen because half the residents had decided they weren’t going to co-operate. Luckily they didn’t actually want to sublet, they simply didn’t want to oblige therefore no further conflict had arisen. Some purchasers since then, I learned from the longstanding residents, had hoped to sublet, but their flats had deeds of variation, so they were stymied. Residents did not want subletting; those who had inherited flats from their parents and wanted to keep them while living elsewhere often felt differently.

More recently Mr Thorogood, the anxious director/ company secretary of Seagull Towers, had asked the company solicitors to prepare a draft lease in a modern format. Six months had gone by, and by the time it arrived a new board of two had been co-opted including a London absentee owner. The draft lease was circulated to howls of rage from the opposing faction.

Six feet under

This was a fairly common view, and as other problems were more urgent, the leases lay untouched for a year.
When I became a director and company secretary in the next upheaval, I thought this was a project that would be worth completing so that Seagull Towers could start afresh, and I rashly embarked on what turned out to be two years of strenuous effort. It was clear that the offending draft lease was just a standard format, not geared to the instructions of Mr Thorogood, and we needed to go through everything from the beginning to ensure that everyone was aware of the major issues. I turned into a one-woman lease-explication business and intermediary between the solicitors, a sceptical board and residents with varying degrees of interest in the project. We tried to retain the provisions of the old lease as far as possible, except in the matter of subletting.

Everyone wanted to ban subletting except two London lawyers who had recently inherited flats and who were never the smallest help in our legal tribulations. London lawyers, regardless of personal interests, tend to the view that such a ban renders a flat less saleable, but that’s not the view in sedate Gullscliff. Our local solicitors endorsed the residents’ opinion that we might get fewer buyers, but they would be of the right sort. People retiring from London for peace and quiet don’t want any more amplified rap or constant changes of neighbour, thank you. As the flats in question had deeds of variation on them already, the lawyers were easily persuaded to join the majority.

The sinking fund was a tougher matter; several residents thought we should have provision for one even though Seagull Towers had never had one and we had a sizable income from a mobile phone mast, but the majority view prevailed. There were delays caused by the need for brand new plans being overlooked by our solicitors, changes in the Land Registry’s requirements, objections from residents to this or that provision. It was thanks to the phone mast money that we managed to push the project through, since it meant that we did not to need to levy residents. But at last Seagull Towers is free of dissension over what should be done about the leases: even The Old Bill has grudgingly stopped mentioning the ‘lawyers’ racket’, now that it’s all done.