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Solicitors for £2650 all in. Hence, one surmises, the attractiveness for her of our Solicitors. (Folder_00 Item_78)
“PBC” comment: The result of Mrs Hillgarth resulted in our issuance of an invoice dated 25 March 2014 for our time and costs involved in defending our position. (Folder_00 Item_79)
“PBC” comment: During the RTM affair, Mrs Hillgarth contacted our Freeholder, Royal London, and we were required to explain our predicament to them in an email dated 9 October 2013
Dear Mr. Allen -
Thank you for your call.
The Head Lease was obtained in July 2011 with the sole intents of running the block more efficiently, more economically and more lovingly as well as making certain that the Head Lease was not appro- priated by someone or some inappropriate company.
The four Directors do include Ms Hillgarth. Ms Hillgarth is also a director of the RTM Company, mak- ing her situation somewhat unique. There is, and has been for many years some antipathy between myself and Ms Hillgarth over various concerns, mainly her sub-tenants etc with attendant well known problems with some sub-let tenants.
Ms. Hillgarth is also a very difficult person to deal with personally and even more difficult, as her fellow Directors now appreciate, professionally. Records will attest to the fact that she has complained, dis- puted and refused to accept sensible advice, observations and comments from previous Head Lease owners, such as Duncan Salvesan at Rivers Edge), previous Managing agent's such as Haywards and subsequently Kinleigh's. She has now turned her attention to Mitre House Management Limited, whom she considers incompetent, unqualified and unprofessional. All of which erroneous comments were directed previously to the personnel mentioned above.
I can fully substantiate these previous comments if requested in one pdf of Ms Hillgarth's correspon- dence to those mentioned.
It is difficult to fully ascertain the actual reason for Ms Hillgarth to have instigated an RTM. Initially it was due to a long standing argument over the budget to be appropriated for the Internal Decorations at Mitre House. Ms. Hillgarth also is adamant she wishes to employ independent Managing Agents, despite initially being quite content to follow her fellow Directors' wish to properly manage the place ourselves employing, when required, fully competent and professional people which as you are well aware can be both negotiated with over cost as well as dismissed in case of incompetence. Agents quite understandably rely on a set team no matter cost nor competence.
To my knowledge, everything at Mitre House since we took over the management (on 1st January 2012) has been done by the book, following exactly what our previous, very competent and friendly Agents' Kinleigh's were doing, undertaking, contracting to and advising us do whenever requested. A perusal of our first years' Service Charge accounts will amply attest to the fact that savings have been made almost everywhere. They are not audited as Ms Hillgarth insists on, and neither were Kinleigh's nor Haywards previous to that. Kinleigh's were charging their accountants out at £1365, whereas we paid our accountants £695 for exact same service.
Electricity in previous 2 years rose from £265 to £740. We re-negotiated our contract and paid £546.
Kinleigh's were sending out Quarterly Demands in YE2011 for £950 per quarter. We reduced them to £750 in YE 2012, and this year down to £650. All three years resulted in (or will for YE2013) a surplus due back to Lessees - which for YE2011 and YE2012 has already been refunded.
As explained to Ms Hillgarth and her fellow conspirators, you don't achieve that by spending £60,000 on Internal Decor (mainly cosmetic) when Management had sourced exact same works by individual contractors for £35,000.