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News
Service Charge Seminar a great success
Date issued: 7th May 2009
On the 6th May Peter Bird, from PBS, co-presented a service charge seminar with Robert Wassall of Blake Lapthorn Solicitors at BL's offices in Southampton. The seminar which provided an overview of the legal and practical issues of managing service charges was attended by over 40 housing professionals from the south of the UK.
Service charges are a complex area of housing management where the issues to be considered balance between the legal requirements and the management of resident expectations.
In setting service charges the landlord is deciding on behalf of residents how to maintain the property, at the residents' expense. It can easily be seen how it is far better to manage service charges in partnership with your residents than to make decisions on their behalf and then need to explain your reasoning to them and gain their support.
In the management of service charges many organisations fail to meet the legal requirements (and even the regulatory requirement) without complaint from residents, however any case successfully pursued by a resident can result in significant losses by the landlord and can also reveal the volnerability of the landlord to further cases by other residents. The message here is if you have not got your house in order, but not yet been found out, that is no reason to allow the situation to persist.
Key themes of the presentation were to check what is actually written in the lease or tenancy agreement (and don't assume that they are all the same)and the need for all those people in the organisation whose work may impact on service charges to understand how to carry out their work so that costs are properly recoverable.
Feedback from those present showed that the event covered the areas of interest to those attending and there was strong support for a follow up seminar that would go into greater depth. Peter and Robert are now considering a follow up in the Autumn.
The slides from the PBS element of the seminar are downloadable from the link below (around 1.5 Mb).
For more information please view this document