© 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.
We’ve got a good little community in my block. We look out for one another. But when I resigned as chairman of the residents’ management company, I seriously considered moving. A six-year stint of querulous emails and knocks on the door at all hours had taken its toll. I‘d developed the habit of sneaking out with the garbage in the dead of night to avoid being trapped by yet another resident complaining about the cost of the roof repairs, or the noisy sub-tenants next door or a missing lightbulb.
Fate decrees that all blocks must have at least one difficult resident, who regards all management activity as inherently suspicious and bound to encourage nefarious tendencies, from laziness and profligacy to downright lying. And it’s not just managing agents who get it in the neck. Board directors, even though they are volunteers for a job notably free of salary and perks, can find themselves tarred with the very same brush.
So it’s not surprising it’s often hard to recruit new directors. Yes, apathy plays its part. But, with some leaseholders, so does a well-developed sense of self-preservation. Yet a residents’ management company must have two directors to operate legally. Lack of a properly constituted board can lead to failure to file returns, which could ultimately result in the company being struck off. Whereupon, if you own the freehold, it becomes forfeit to the Crown, and the only way you can get it back is to buy it all over again.
The best encouragement to volunteer for the board is the thought that you’re safeguarding the value of your flat. However, a little encouragement would be welcome from on high as well. During the past five years more and more residents’ freehold companies have been set up. But also, during the past five years, the government has been making life difficult for volunteer directors by tangling them in miles of red tape.
Disability access, asbestos regulations, fire regulations, wiring checks, health and safety… the list goes on. Because your block is run by a company, your common parts are judged by the Health and Safety Executive to be a workplace, subject to the same legal requirements as an office building, from general risk assessments to quarterly water-testing to guard against Legionnaire’s disease. The assumption is you’re a profit-making business, so all the inspections, reports and improvements you need to carry out will just be in a day’s work.
Not so, if you’re a volunteer director. The admin is a constant headache. Yes, you can hand it over to your managing agent (who sooner or later will need to put up his fee – inevitably spurring complaints from your fellow leaseholders). But, as directors, you employ the managing agent. The buck stops with you. This kind of responsibility puts leaseholders off. More than the evenings spent in meetings and the accusatory emails from the difficult resident, it is a potent deterrent to volunteering.
And a new and worrying tendency is appearing in the most recent legislation to affect blocks. Directors, along with managing agents, face fines for not enforcing the new fire regulations. When the smoking ban comes in this July, directors and managing agents can jointly be fined up to £2,500 for failing to display No-Smoking notices or to prevent their fellow leaseholders taking an illicit drag in the common parts. The new Companies Act, which came in last November, gives directors duties towards the community and environment that could leave them open to legal action. The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, which came into force last April, could also leave them vulnerable to being sued.
And, if your block is a pre-1991 conversion with a third of the flats sublet, under last year’s Housing Act it will be classified as a House in Multiple Occupation and will require a licence from your local authority. The council will probably decide your managing agent should be the licensee but, if you don’t have a managing agent, one of your directors will be responsible for holding the licence and for the safety measures that go with it.
Individually, each piece in this jigsaw of legislation has a worthy aim – to make places of employment safer and to ensure companies operate better. None of it is designed with residents’ management companies specifically in mind. They just happen to get caught in its toils. The cumulative effect is a nightmare. And very scary indeed to the would-be director.
What can be done? The Department of Communities, although it’s responsible for housing and leasehold, maintains it’s powerless. While the Housing Act and Building Regulations emanate from the DCLG, other legislation comes from a range of departments – the Health and Safety Executive, Trade and Industry, Work and Pensions and Health.
One answer would be to redefine the status of residents’ management companies as different from other companies. The Right to Enfranchise companies originally proposed in the 2002 Leasehold Reform Act might have served this purpose – except that everyone hopes they have been forgotten, since that particular part of the legislation would have made enfranchisement much more difficult. Another solution might be to allow residents’ management companies to hire in professional directors.
But, until an answer is found, the dearth of willing directors will continue. We used to have six serving on our board. Now we’re down to the minimum two. And one of them is desperate to retire...