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Limited the amount due [in this instance one fourth of £4995], as indeed it would pay the cleaning account to the cleaning company, the lift account or indeed any invoice presented and verified to the relevant supplier.
It is true that the lessees have – at least to date - paid these assessed charges, but only under duress because MHML is the Head Lessor, and they are thus (ostensibly) at risk of forfeiture of their individual leases if proper service charges are not paid. I very much doubt if lessees will feel minded to pay any further management charges in the future. At least not to MHML. And I very much doubt whether any court would readily order forfeiture on the grounds of failure to pay service charges once they understood the improper basis on which the charges have hitherto been levied and paid.
That, we would propose, is supposition although we must agree that Mrs Hillgarth did, as she is very adept at doing, attempt to organise other Lessees to make clear they were only paying the 2015 Quarterlies under duress. We consider all Lessees agreed to the 2015 Budget published December 2014 for comment.
We are presuming Mrs Hillgarth’s dissatisfaction that after three years of maintaining our Management Fees at £4320 we raised them to £4850 [remaining still more reasonable than previous Agent’s percentage increase]. We also raised the Quarterly Demands from £750 to £900 so as to refurbish the Reserves after the recent Internals/Externals – and as can be seen from the YE2014 accounts there was a deficit of £1753 indicating a slight rise required in Quarterly Demands to cover expenditure during 2015 – an example I propose of good management from myself and my two co-Directors, both of whom are Accountants, with qualifications.
Quite extraordinarily, Mrs Hillgarth had been quite content in 2013/2014 to spend a works’ budget in excess of £200,000, [ref Wade Quote on S.20) and indeed had persuaded one or two other lessees to [almost] agree to this level of expenditure. Correspondence on file amply identifies this situation and the level of required funding from all lessees if it were to be adopted, which was somewhat ignored when confirmation was requested of Mrs Hillgarth and indeed other lessees?
It was not adopted, as Mrs Hillgarth did not have sufficient support but still considered our revised 2015 Service Charge/Reserves Budget to be excessive, hence her duress comment and under protest on some payments one presumes.
It is also true that, again, two or three lessees [including Mrs Hillgarth] have queried what we were calling Management Fees for almost the very same reasons you have described above, and to which we replied with almost the exact same [reasons] information we have outlined above.
It is well documented in correspondence [which I can supply if required] that when we [including Mrs Hillgarth] purchased the Head Lease in July 2011 discussions were had and Mrs Hillgarth agreed, that we [the new company and we four directors] could attempt running the place ourselves [but we did investigate/interview/research many Agents beforehand] – and good savings could be made with careful and common sense husbandry of the expenditure including a bare necessity to pay Managing Agents’ fees as we felt that there was no need [remembering we were all both lessees and Directors so all benefitted from savings] to charge a fee, but just cover actual costs [mainly for me as I was the 24/7 on