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Hi everyone, I hope we're all safe and well and have enough loo roll in these uncertain times.
I received a "letter before action" last week from a solicitor asking for service charge arrears.I assumed my service charge account was in credit as, whilst we do't have a sinking fund, I had made a large deposit a couple of years ago to cover impending major works that still havent happened, so the annual s/c obligations have been gradually depleting the balance and it seems the last half-yearly demand in Sept 2019 exceeded what remained and left a balance owing of a few hundred pounds.
The letter is in the name of our Right to Manage companyandthe Landlord. Since the managing agent is appointed by the RTM co, the landlord has no involvement with managing the building or collecting service charges so I'm puzzled as to how the solicitor can be acting on the landlord's behalf. A clause in my lease does state that the landlord can recover legal fees, so I am wondering whether the solicitor is relying on this clause to force me to pay their charges, but I did read somewhere (I wish I remembered to bookmark the page as cant find it again) that these charges fall outside the RTM obligations and so they need the landlord's written authority to add their costs and interest.
Does the managing agent have to follow a certain protocol, i.e. sending reminder letters, before initating expensive legal action?
I'm not looking to avoid my obligations, it was a genuine mistake, and I would have paid immediately had the managing agent let me know there was a problem. I did receive a copy of the service charge demand in Sept but there was no statement and since then I've had no correspondence from the managing agent at all and now there are £250 legal fees from their solicitor just for writing me a letter.
Any advice would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
Oh, the solicitor is JB Leitch... currently reading not very polite things about them on TrustPilot and Google reviews.
I received a "letter before action" last week from a solicitor asking for service charge arrears.I assumed my service charge account was in credit as, whilst we do't have a sinking fund, I had made a large deposit a couple of years ago to cover impending major works that still havent happened, so the annual s/c obligations have been gradually depleting the balance and it seems the last half-yearly demand in Sept 2019 exceeded what remained and left a balance owing of a few hundred pounds.
The letter is in the name of our Right to Manage companyandthe Landlord. Since the managing agent is appointed by the RTM co, the landlord has no involvement with managing the building or collecting service charges so I'm puzzled as to how the solicitor can be acting on the landlord's behalf. A clause in my lease does state that the landlord can recover legal fees, so I am wondering whether the solicitor is relying on this clause to force me to pay their charges, but I did read somewhere (I wish I remembered to bookmark the page as cant find it again) that these charges fall outside the RTM obligations and so they need the landlord's written authority to add their costs and interest.
Does the managing agent have to follow a certain protocol, i.e. sending reminder letters, before initating expensive legal action?
I'm not looking to avoid my obligations, it was a genuine mistake, and I would have paid immediately had the managing agent let me know there was a problem. I did receive a copy of the service charge demand in Sept but there was no statement and since then I've had no correspondence from the managing agent at all and now there are £250 legal fees from their solicitor just for writing me a letter.
Any advice would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
Oh, the solicitor is JB Leitch... currently reading not very polite things about them on TrustPilot and Google reviews.
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