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Reply: During our first year (2012) we reduced lessees’ annual outgoings from £3800 down to £2600 and maintained similar if not identical savings through to our last year (2017) when lessees’ annual outgoings amounted to £3000pa. Since we resigned our management in 2017 lessees’ annual outgoings now total £10,000 for 2019 with no difference whatsoever in services provided to properly manage and maintain Mitre House.
It was also questionable whether MHML or its Directors were entitled under the terms of the sub-leases to charge the leaseholders/tenants for carrying out the functions of a managing agent. However MHML ploughed ahead – since it could – and seriously abused its position as head lessee by imposing management charges on the leaseholders/tenants at market rates comparable with or exceeding those which would be charged by an appropriately qualified and regulated managing agent offering relevant safeguards, such as professional indemnity insurance.
This situation caused serious tensions with those leaseholders who were not directors or shareholders of MHML, and also between the directors themselves. Michele Hillgarth, whose sole interest was in having the block managed by honest and competent professional managing agents, was removed as a director of MHML by the other three, on 18 September 2014. It may be relevant to add that correct legal procedures for her removal were not followed, but she did not contest her removal as she had no interest in exploiting her position to extort money from the other leaseholders, and she no longer wished to be involved as a board member. However she remained a 25% shareholder of MHML.
Reply: Due to Mrs Hillgarth’s perceived disloyalty, deceitful behaviour and recalcitrant attitude towards her fellow directors that she was requested to resign in September 2014 and has been truculent and litigious ever since including slandering and defaming her fellow directors to third parties to the distinct cost and embarrassment of all her three ex-colleagues.
Legal Proceedings in the First-Tier Property Tribunal
In due course Mrs Hillgarth and other leaseholders at Mitre House became so dissatisfied with the way that MHML (through Paul Brown-Constable) was managing Mitre House that she, supported by other leaseholders, brought proceedings in the First-Tier Property Tribunal, alleging (inter alia) fraud, in order to secure a change of management. Her action was successful and by an Order of the First-Tier Property Tribunal made on 28 June 2017 the firm of Maunder Taylor was appointed to manage Mitre House in lieu of MHML.
Reply: Despite three offers to Mrs Hillgarth for her to take over the management and Head Lease at nil consideration of Mitre House, as neither MHML nor it’s directors wished to continue in their capacity as Head Lease proprietors (purely for technical reasons as new UK law requirements for managing agents was imminent), Mrs Hillgarth still progressed an application to the First Tier Property Tribunal at a cost to her allegedly of £15,000 and MHML offered no defence and we resigned as indeed we had previously offered to do on three occasions previously.
The First Tier Tribunal’s decision was correctly attributed solely to the fact that “relations between the Applicants and the landlord [MHML] had irretrievably broken down.”