Give the owners of freehold properties the right to protect their homes from scam companies. Service charge is a national problem. Companies raised from nowhere asking huge amounts of monies - service charge - for nonexistent work, insufficient work, unjustified work. All because is in our TP1 , title deeds. 

Solicitors fail to open the eyes of their clients regarding service charge, and after years (in my case after 10 years) your freehold property is at risk and you could have your house repossessed for not paying service charge. 

The law must protect the homeowners, these companies must have a limit and obligations. Management companies must not put homeowners in difficulty. Together we can make this change! Together we can change the law, and we must take control of our freehold properties. 

Extra charges on private estates

Thousands of buyers purchase freehold homes on private estates each year and are told there is a small service charge to look after the communal open spaces. This is because patches of grass, play areas, electric gates and sometimes roads too, will not be adopted by the council and will remain in private ownership.

When freeholders buy their house, they sign a legal document called a deed of transfer setting out the contribution the homeowner will pay towards the cost of maintaining the estate. The charge may be referred to as an estate charge, maintenance charge or service charge.

In most cases, a managing agent will be employed by the developer to collect the service charge and organise maintenance. But although service charges may be reasonable initially, many homeowners have found fees can quickly rise while the service they receive deteriorates. Some even find themselves paying for the upkeep of areas still under construction.

To add insult to injury, some homeowners still have to pay full council tax, despite the council not maintaining their road, green spaces or children’s playgrounds. These areas are open to the public too, so not as private as you might think.

“This set-up is currently totally unregulated and homeowners have no rights of redress when they are charged excessively. Payment is enforced by having clauses in the legal transfer documents (deeds),” says Ms Priestley. “There is a huge variation in the way the deeds are written between builders and estates, which makes it harder to challenge them. What they have in common is an imbalance of rights in favour of the management companies.”

A key issue is that homeowners don’t have a recognised route of redress when challenging estate charges. “Unfortunately, freeholders do not have the same statutory protections as leaseholders, whose service charges are subject to legislation whereby the landlord’s service charges have to be reasonable (Landlord & Tenant Act 1985),” says Simon Wood, a barrister at law firm Hart Brown, “Accordingly, any claim would have to be made pursuant to general contractual principles. The freeholders will need to check their transfer deed and ensure that the charges are properly chargeable under its terms.” 

Our aim is:

1. To change the law to protect the owners of freehold properties from Management Companies that ask money for unjustified work. They must provide invoices, accounts, everything relating with the expenses for communal open spaces. And the amounts they ask for should not put in difficulty a homeowner. 

2. Local Councils to take over the communal areas and free us from paying Service Charge. 

3. Every single person, owner of a freehold property, that paid Service Charge must receive back compensation from their Management Company.