Page 6 - 1_Letter from Begg 23-3-16 (13pp)

Either you were decorating your flat yourself, or it was being done (whether wholly or partly) by contractors. It is not possible that both of these statements were true. Perhaps you would be kind enough to clarify which is correct, and to answer Mr Leigh-Pemberton’s (perfectly appropriate) enquiry as to whether there has been any element of personal benefit.
The Issue of Competence
It is apparent from the correspondence that you have proved wholly incompetent in managing the project as well as the budget. At no time was this more apparent than in the course of September 2014. In a flurry of some 20 e-mails over as many days you moved the lessees from a statement to the effect that no additional funding would be required, to a request for additional funds, both for additional service charge and for one off reserves, coupled with a statement that certain approved and funded works were to be cancelled.
In your e-mail dated 2 September 2014 you said: “The cost [for the TV aerial] will be met from future reserves during 2015 at a rate per flat over 4 quarters of £96 each lessee meaning no one has to pay any additional sums whatsoever.”
Indeed you went on to indicate, in an e-mail dated 13 September 2014, that you were somehow generating savings on the project. You said: “Since the scaffolding commenced installation on Sunday 31st August, exactly two weeks ago, dead on schedule, Management have already saved Lessees £1177.56 OFF the agreed and budgeted £105,019.”
Nevertheless in your subsequent e-mail of 17 September 2014 you asked leaseholders to pay £108 per quarter additional funds for the whole of 2015. Then in your e-mail to the lessees dated 21 September 2014, which is particularly confusing and misleading, you told the lessees that if they were to pay an extra £2,000 each it would cover certain extra (unbudgeted and/or unwanted) works of which they had been notified at the last minute, such as replacement of the water tank, and a communal TV installation.
I should add that leaseholders had been advised, at 10.30 pm on a Friday night, of the urgent necessity to replace this water tank, but unsupported by any sort of rational explanation, or third party inspection report, or by alternative quotations – this notwithstanding that a surveyor had apparently been instructed in advance of the project. This compounded a similar unscheduled “emergency” on 10 August 2014 when leaseholders were advised that: “due to some emergency electric works following our recent electrical report, electricians will be attending Mitre House for a week and whilst various other electrical works are carried out as a further economy measure”. This had “only become apparent on Friday 8th[August] and best to get out of the way before major works commence on 1st September.” These electrics were “not included in the A&R Lawrence quote”.
In your e-mail of 21 September 2014 you went on to say that four items which had been approved and which were within the planned and budgeted works (including the specialist terrazzo floor renovation) would be cancelled because of a shortage of money: “this affair is far too time consuming on Management to re-arrange”.... On your MHML website under the heading “Quotes and Costs” you subsequently informed tenants that “due to the non-payment by some lessees of the previously agreed £2,000 to properly fund the A.R.Lawrence quote,