Page 3 - 53_PBC to Begg (Crime OCR)_12-7-16 (33pp)

2 While it is true that specific qualifications are not required to serve as a managing agent, the role generally implies appropriate training and qualifications, relevant expertise, a relevant regulatory authority (such as the RICS or the Association of Residential Managing Agents), a code of conduct, professional indemnity insurance, complaints procedures and so on. Mr Brown-Constable, to whom all the management activity has been delegated by his co-direc- tors, is a graphic designer by profession and had no prior experience of managing property.
(reply) this is purely subjective as previously discussed - I am a graphic designer with 45 years of experience of interior design, building exhibition stands world-wide,
project management and very accomplished at economic DIY - If you can read and write and use the internet, there exists every conceivable document required to familiarise oneself with the requirements, the dangers, the legal statutes etc required to manage, most especially a small building with only nine flats over three floors. Were we to have subscribe to ARMA or RICS, our fees would rise considerably out of all proportion for just 9 flats of which three are owned by the directors (33%), as opposed to an Agent representing multiple flats in multiple blocks. If we had hired an Agent which Mrs Hillgarth began insisting upon, it is a certainty that our present £900 Quar- terly Demands would double. Our recent research shows an average cost on a small block such as Mitre House to be £650 plus vat per flat.
That’s £7020 Fees plus totally uncontrollable costs for which Mrs Hillgarth would use very much to her advantage and if her requests and demands were not met, her correspondence would match the previously advised to you and supplied - yet more vitriol and threats of LVT to the unsuspecting Agent etc etc. Were she to advise other lessees at Mitre House of a possible £7200 of Agents’ fees (plus a loading on suppliers and other hidden costs) I think, I know, she would receive negative comments.
Purely selfishly, I for one could not afford to pay greatly enlarged Quarterlies.
3 Mr Brown-Constable invoices MHML for his personal "consultancy" at daily rate fees of £10 a day for 365 days per annum. That is a total of £3,650 per annum and is charged by MHML to the Service Charge Account. MHML, of which Mr Brown-Constable is a 25% owner, charged the leaseholders £4,320 per annum for each for the three years 2012- 2014, £4,850 for 2015 and is projecting £4,995 for 2016. These charges are higher than the leaseholders were paying in 2011 (the year before MHML took over the management of Mitre House) to Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, a reputable and experienced firm and one of the largest independent property services groups in London.
(reply) wrong: as previously stated in correspondence. My £10 daily fee (which is hardly considered a “consultancy” as it’s a day’s work/attendance on site) are charged quarterly to MHML and paid like any supplier/creditor by MHML.
MHML invoices the Service Charge for its Management fees as per the agreed Budget. The two have no correlation as you are implying. In fact my fees and costs invoiced to MHML sometimes far exceed the amount indicated for Management fees as stated in the year end Accounts.
As indeed, if Mrs Hillgarth will no doubt recall, were her receipts from MHML in the past, which included her now disputed RTM payment/debt etc. All perfectly legal, so please no further innuendos or comment. She proved herself thoroughly untrustworthy when refusing to pay her portion of our set-up costs initially despite our assurance they would be fully re-imbursed in due course. They were, too, to we three who did pay, but we were required to dock her debt from the payment both she (less debt) received and we received in full. No different to what happened re: her RTM debt due to MHML.
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