Leasehold - landlord overcharging for maintenence

[Mindzai]

Hopefully someone can help me understand my rights here - it is not strictly a landlord-tennant issue because I own the flat I live in, however the property is leasehold and the council is the landlord (or whatever the correct term is for this situation!).

They have recently carried out some maintenance work on the communal areas and outside area of the property (it contains 4 flats).

They provided the 4 owners with a breakdown of costs, totalling about £550. The vast majority of the cost (£500) was listed as being for internal and external decoration.

I did not sign any agreement or anything else, but they said if there was a problem with their proposal to contact them before the work started. In principle this sounded fine to me, so I didnt say anything.

When they came to do the work, all they actually did was paint our garden fence (listed as a separate expense from external decoration) and paint my front door. As you can imagine paying £500 for having my front door painted does not appeal!

I have emailed the council a few times with my concerns and got nowhere. I absolutely do not intend to pay them the amount they have billed me. Of course I will happily pay for the work they have done, but to give you an idea, they charged each resident about £20 for painting the fence, and it took the painter about 2 days. Painting the front door took him 1 day so I do not see why it should cost £480 more than the fence!

They also have not done various other jobs, eg ivy removal that we will be billed for, and I have seen no external decoration at all.

What can I do about this? I do not have £500 to chuck away on nothing and I dont intend to pay that much for the small amount of work thats been done.

Any advice gratefully received!

[Mindzai]

Anyone?

[Ed999]

Read this thread (General guidance relating to service charge disputes): http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...ml#post1112848

Read this thread (items not within the service charge clause): Service Charges dispute - Suggestions

Read this thread (building works): http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk...ml#post1201549

Basically, you would have to refuse to pay the service charge item in question, on one of the legal grounds mentioned in those threads.

It is best to arrange collective action by all the affected tenants, so that they all refuse to pay. This will put additional pressure on the landlord.


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