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The £219,000 cost was from Mrs Hillgarth’s Wade, for the exact same workings as the lowest tender for £105,000 which was subsequently adopted.
Mrs Hillgarth claims that she did not request of Wade (or Hemi) certain workings to quote for in her initial two Wade quotes (and Hemi) or indeed requested any quotes whatsoever (as sworn on oath at a First Tier Tribunal hearing on 26th June 2017 with her Solicitor present)), and considered the works listed in the final Surveyor’s Schedule of Works, given to Wade to tender from, to be the only works to be progressed, by Wade or any other tendering contractor, including the cheapest.
Mrs Hillgarth appears not to have properly perused the final Surveyor’s Schedule of Works and denies in correspondence having had sight of it to do so.
This cannot be true as she was supplied with multiple copies, it was on our website and she required a copy to pass over to her preferred contractor, Wade, to tender from.
In a MHML Board Meeting on 23 May 2014 it was again advised to Mrs Hillgarth that neither her Wade final cost of £219,000 nor any of the other tendered costs, including the cheapest, £105,000, included the items she had requested of Wade/Hemi to quote for initially.
It was further advised in this meeting to Mrs Hillgarth that some of the items costed for in all of the received tenders, including Wade’s £219,000 and the cheapest, £105,000, could be done slightly cheaper quite easily by MHML personnel and also that certain sensible savings could also be made from even the cheapest tender (£105,000) which again could easily be achieved with no detriment to the workings legally required to do for both Internals and Externals within the terms of the Head Lease.
It was explained to Mrs Hillgarth that these savings, however accomplished, would then be used to fund those items that Mrs Hillgarth had requested of Wade/Hemi to initially quote for but had not been included in the final Surveyor’s Schedule of Works as they were considered unaffordable.
Mrs Hillgarth agreed to this proposal and verbally exclaimed that the savings to be made and used for unaffordable items “will make everybody happy”.
Put simply, if Mrs Hillgarth’s initial two Wade quotes (and/or Hemi) contained costed items which do NOT appear in Wade’s final tender nor any other contractor’s tender then they could be reliably considered “additional unaffordable items” which was explained to Mrs Hillgarth in the Board Meeting of 23 May 2014 to be capable of being afforded if sensible savings were made from the finally agreed budget (in this case £105,000), in any manner possible, to which she agreed and when advised that no refunds to lessees would take place, she exclaimed “will be used for something else”, followed by “well then everybody will be happy”.
Admittedly, despite a tape recording of this entire Board Meeting, she has subsequently denied all knowledge of this conversation and indeed maintained that she never said anything of the sort and the recording has been edited and doctored?
As previously stated, once a specification/schedule of work has been approved by the leaseholders under the Section 20 process, and contractors approved to carry it out, it is not open to MHML, except with the consent of the leaseholders (which MHML did not have), to deviate unilaterally from the approved scheme of work or from the contractors engaged to carry it out. The legal consequence of that is – or should be - to render any charge to the leaseholders