Red Rock was instructed by the Residents Management Company to manage and oversee the cyclical external decoration work.

Red Rock administered the Section 20 as part of their management fee (at no extra cost) and secured a contract with a local company, saving around £200,000 in comparison to the most expensive quotation issued in the Statement of Estimates.

Since management, Red Rock had been continuing to build a healthy Reserve Fund which meant that none of the Leaseholders had anything extra to pay for the major work to be carried out.

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.

We helped the leaseholder canvas other leaseholders for support by providing them with the tangible benefits of carrying out Right to Manage. It made the Leaseholds comfortable with the idea once we highlighted that the Right to Manage process would be carried out by our Legal Services Director. Most leaseholders didn’t know it was possible to carry out the Right to Manage.

The leaseholders were asked to get in touch with their telephone numbers/email addresses so that we could organise a meeting to discuss next steps.

We immediately applied to Companies house to register the company and prepared Notices to Participate to serve on all those leaseholders who did not attend the meeting, inviting them to also become members. We are obliged by law to wait 14 days before the Notice of Claim can be served on the Landlord.

The Notice of Claim was sent to the Landlord and other parties to the lease. The Landlord did make contact with us immediately after receiving the notice. We explained the process to them and highlighted the Landlord Duties with regards the claim.

The Landlord is given a deadline date to respond which is at least one month after the notice is served. We didn’t here anything else from them until the final day they had to respond. If they hadn’t responded then we would have automatically been awarded the Right to Manage. We received a letter from the Landlords Solicitor on the final day saying they didn’t dispute the claim.