Management Co. holding on to green areas.

Hi all. I'm living in a housing estate which is being developed in phases. The first phase, in which I live, is complete and is due to be taken in charge by the local authority, all the paperwork has been done, the surveys etc and it is due for decision next month. From what I understand this is more or less a rubber stamp. The problem arises with the open spaces. The local authority, in their taking in charge policy, say they will take over all the open spaces but will not maintain them. The developer, in the guise of the Managing Agent, says that the open spaces will remain in the charge of the Management Company until the entire development is complete and with that goes the right to levy service charges. Surely this is contradictory. The developer does maintain his showhouses in this part of the development and puts this forward as the reason for keeping control of the open spaces. This seems like a "cake and eat it" situation. I'd appreciate any views.

martinhayes said:

Hi all. I'm living in a housing estate which is being developed in phases. The first phase, in which I live, is complete and is due to be taken in charge by the local authority, all the paperwork has been done, the surveys etc and it is due for decision next month. From what I understand this is more or less a rubber stamp. The problem arises with the open spaces. The local authority, in their taking in charge policy, say they will take over all the open spaces but will not maintain them. The developer, in the guise of the Managing Agent, says that the open spaces will remain in the charge of the Management Company until the entire development is complete and with that goes the right to levy service charges. Surely this is contradictory. The developer does maintain his showhouses in this part of the development and puts this forward as the reason for keeping control of the open spaces. This seems like a "cake and eat it" situation. I'd appreciate any views.

Click to expand...

Hi, As a member of the management company can you vote to have the council take over the open spaces by calling an EGM? You can also vote to change agent.

AKA said:

Hi, As a member of the management company can you vote to have the council take over the open spaces by calling an EGM? You can also vote to change agent.

Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Any policy of the Management Company can be changed at an AGM, including replacing the Agent. It all depends on numbers and, in many cases, herein lies the snag. In our case there are 190 houses each of which has one vote and 7 " subscribers" each of whom has 30 votes so, doing the arithmetic you can see that even in the unlikely event we could get a full turnout, we can never outvote the developer and his cronies. This iniquitous situation is all too common.
As regards the Local Authority taking over the estate, this can be achieved by plebiscite but the snag still lies in the transfer of "common areas".

This "iniquitous situation" was, of course, quite obvious when the houses were sold. Each house buyer nevertheless took a decision to go ahead.

The developer wants the open spaces to be maintained to a certain standard and has set up a management company structure to be sure that this is done. Buyers went into this with eyes open. Buyers also ( whether they want it or not) get the benefit of well-maintained open areas. I don't see this as something which could be called 'iniquitous'. Irritating maybe, in the same way that many costs can irritate, but not inherently unfair.

MOB said:

This "iniquitous situation" was, of course, quite obvious when the houses were sold. Each house buyer nevertheless took a decision to go ahead.

The developer wants the open spaces to be maintained to a certain standard and has set up a management company structure to be sure that this is done. Buyers went into this with eyes open. Buyers also ( whether they want it or not) get the benefit of well-maintained open areas. I don't see this as something which could be called 'iniquitous'. Irritating maybe, in the same way that many costs can irritate, but not inherently unfair.

Click to expand...

The Management Company was a requirement of the planning application not forward thinking or altruism on the part of the developer, it applied to every new housing estate in the county. This clause has now been revoked on direction of the Minister for Environment and later and future phases of the development will not have a Management Company.
What was not, I presume, envisaged by the local authority and was not explained, certainly to me, was the restrictive practises which are incorporated in the Articles of Association.
The situation as it stands is that the developer and the subscribers, a misnomer if ever there was one, are holding the residents to ransom. When the Local Authority takes the estate in charge, liability for 99% of the costs of managing the estate will pass to them and yet the estimate for service charges for 2009 has increased by 13%. You think this is fair?
We, as a Residents Association, have offered to take over maintenance of the green areas but this offer has been refused.
Incidentally, because of the change in housing density requirements, future phases of the development will not have the same area of greens to be maintained and all those existing green areas are contained within this phase. It is not even necessary to enter this phase to access the future development.