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friendlies], but also those sub-letting [Mrs Hillgarth most especially – keep your friends close but your enemies closer] but also one lessee offshore and one lessee who has had a sitting tenant for over 15 years and has never shown any real interest in either Mitre House nor it’s neighbours nor its politics, but without doubt still a valid lessee.
I was advised not to, even by our previous Agents, KFH, with whom I am often in touch (as indeed I still am with Gavin Owen of Haywards) but I was convinced that common sense would prevail, available stated budgets would be considered, and so long as we met the schedule for both Internals/Eternals and followed form for S.20 notices, all would be almost ignored by busy hard working lessees happy that all was in hand, on schedule within budget requiring no funding nor major disruptions for longer than necessary – and spending as little as possible as opposed to previous Agents’ more cavalier approach to watching costs and expenditure as of course their fees reflected the expenditure and something I wanted to avoid if possible.
Had Mrs Hillgarth complied with the raison d’etre of our Head Lease purchase [or what we three Directors considered our commitment for purchasing was] all would have worked to plan.
But Mrs Hillgarth had a totally different agenda. She considered that now we were in charge we should do all the workings she felt the building had been denied during the years of Agents, almost no matter the cost, and set about canvassing basically newly arrived lessees, having little or no regard for those lessees with more limited income and funds.
Flats rent for upwards of £650 per week at Mitre House meaning Quarterly Demands are not so significant to lessees sub-letting as of course these costs are set off against income.
As such, what commenced as a relatively friendly and interesting project [the Interior] very very quickly deteriorated into as you quite rightly intone, chaos, over a very lengthy three year schedule [July 2011 to 31 August 2014]
I would propose that this chaos, as you refer, was not the fault of either myself nor Mitre House Management Limited or my co-Directors but lies squarely at the door of Mrs Hillgarth, who has persistently attempted to undermine MHML in pursuit of her own selfish agenda, culminating firstly in her failed RTM application and secondly in our insistence she resigns as a Director of MHML.
It is quite obvious that Mrs Hillgarth is pursuing these varied and unpleasant accusations against myself and my fellow co-Directors for reasons of personal animosity as opposed to having anything whatsoever to do with our good management and maintenance of Mitre House.
Mrs Hillgarth’s rebuttals to demands she complies with her lease covenants evidences the above. Mrs Hillgarth’s constant and repeated references to majorities of any kind is and always has been disputed, as are any references to voting or votes or indeed in your following paragraph, Vote Rigging
In the absence of any consensus MHML made normal business decisions to both finish the project within budget, on schedule, within the terms of our Head Lease, with additional workings not in the Schedule of Works but thought to be by Mrs Hillgarth and certainly requested by lessees [who, due again to Mrs Hillgarth’s incompetence, believed were in the