Regent Property assisted Laurie House with their Right To Manage process to enable them to take control of the building away from the freeholder and return the power to the property owners.

A formal RTM company was created and the residents now control the decisions for their own building.

Regent Property also covered all of the legal costs involved with this process and will be willing to do the same for other clients looking to initiate the RTM process

Managed a separate account for services charges and for a reserve fund, which is permitted within the lease. Accounts are balanced using industry specific Qube management software and directors meet monthly to review these. There are currently no service charge arrears exceeding 30 days and the service charge accounts are in credit. All original invoices are made available to directors to view and no additional charges are added to invoices. The service charge budget is currently set at £178,700/year with insurances on top of this.

The Service charge is set in accordance with the lease on an annual basis in discussion with the Directors, based on previous years spending and any planned works.

The Estate has been fully managed by Jennings and Barrett since 2002. The Directors have a range of preferred contractors to carry out planned maintenance and to respond to repairs as required.

Section 20’s works carried out have included a full roof renewal programme completed in 2012, Exterior decorations carried out on a rolling basis of two blocks/year as per the terms of the lease and the installation of entryphone systems across the estate in 2015.

Site visits and meetings with directors are carried held formally every 6 weeks and also on an ad hoc basis as requested or where required.

We manage arrears in a robust manner and as at September 2018 there was just one service charge outstanding. This was being managed through our arrears process and action is taken where service charges are outstanding for more than 30 days.

We arrange buildings insurance for the estate and in order to ensure our RMC directors are protected also arrange the annual directors and officers insurance policy.

Plumbing Issues / Escape of Water - Several occurrences of major escape of water from mains cold water system. On review it was found that due to the main riser pipes being fitted with compression fittings, the pressure from the booster pumps kicking in was causing the joints to vibrate and eventually fail.
To remedy this, we arranged for an inverter pump set controller to maintain a constant pressure and replaced all compression fittings on the main risers with soldered fittings to prevent any further issue. Following completion of the works no further occurrences of escape of water.

Security - Due to vandalism, access control systems to the block had been damaged and were not functioning.
A review was undertaken with a specialist access control contractor, repairs were completed, and anti-vandal equipment was fitted to ensure security going forward.

Fire Equipment Repairs - The block was fitted with a sprinkler system for all flats in the top 3 floors of the building which was not operational.
A specialist contractor was appointed to air test the system before refilling. It was found that a section of pipe had been installed externally by the developers that had not been lagged. When the system was originally commissioned the pipes had frozen causing them to split.
Sections of pipe were replaced, correctly lagged and the system was recommissioned.