Stevenage Homes have cancelled some recent forums due to lack of interest. The Stevenage Homes web site maintains this one will still happen. I’m not surprised; I bet there will be a lot of angry leaseholders present at the meeting.

Another Letter from Stevenage Homes

It should be fun, but what can we achieve?

I intend to call the number given out along with the notice of the management fee increase. I want to get more information on how the new management charges are calculated.

Has anyone tried calling this number?

What did you ask?

What was the response?

Notification for the new management fees arrived today. Actually it arrived yesterday, but I avoided opening it until today as I was in a good mood. I wanted to stay that way.

As expected the letter was a poke in the eye. The old management fee was £57, 000 based on 12.5 percent of services provided.

The new management fee will be £239, 730.This equates to a management overhead of over 52 percent, a truly remarkable figure.

No information is given on how the figures have been arrived at. Just a breakdown of where costs have occurred.

The letter seems full of spin. For example in the section entitled “Comments and observations received from leasholders,” is the comment:

I don’t see any justification to this proposed increase and do not agree with it.

Has the answer

In accordance with the terms of your lease, Stevenage Borough Council is entitled to recover its costs for service provided.

A classic straw man argument.

The actual questions most people will be asking are:

I think this is too high, can you justify it?

What can I do if I still disagree?

No answers to these questions.

Hits to this site are the highest recorded, many coming from Google to the Leaseholders Forums post. Comments have been left discussing what to do.

I have decided to set up an online forum so people looking for information or just wanting to vent can have their say. Maybe it will become a place to organize a response.

We still have the major works to pay for.

November forums are usually well attended. It’s just after the service charge bill goes out. It is usually full of pissed off leaseholders wanting to know why the bills are so much more than the estimates.

This year my bill was actually less than the estimate. Clever! That’s one way to keep people happy. Just as long as they don’t compare this years bill with one from five years ago.

As well as the usual complaints about anti-social behaviour etc, there were a couple of issues which will no doubt reappear in the future

One was Major Works. Stevenage Homes have a grant from central government to carry out a major works on the property they own. Leaseholders will have to pay a share of any work carried out to the block they live in This is causing many people problems. I will cover this in detail later.

We also looked again at the proposed new management fees. Tempers became frayed at the last meeting when we were told we are likely to face big increases.

Stevenage Homes gave a presentation on the methodology they are going to use to calculate the fees. It went down quite well. When they get back with the actual costs, I suspect things will become lively again.

Interesting figures from the meeting: Stevenage Homes manage 4082 flats, of which 1297 are leasehold (31.8%). This is much higher than I expected.

Out of the possible 1297 leaseholders, only between 20 and 40 attend the forums. Stevenage Homes are considering halting them as they are not a cost effective way of communicating. I thought maybe an on-line forum might be a suitable replacement.

I might even consider hosting one myself