'Dispatches' on C4. 'Program about 'Leasehold'

Just finished watching Channel 4's 'Dispatches' program on Leasehold properties.

For those of you who missed-it, the program concentrated on the way freehold owners of 'Buildings of multiple occupation' use the leaseholders who 'own' the individual units within the building as a source of income.

I found it absolutely incredible how some of the leaseholders featured, had seen their maintenance charges nearly double whilst the building itself fell into rack and ruin. The freehold owner seamed to be full of excuses such as 'We are prioritising work based on the risk to safety' - The owners/managers of one block where there had been a broken window in a dangerous position for over 3 months.
At a site in Norwich, the leaseholders are expected to pay a £17k per flat share of the renovation costs of the block. The freeholders are spending £200k on replacing a perfectly good walk-way and cover that runs in front of the shops on the ground floor of the development.

And its not just private landlords skinning the leaseholders. The Council is at it as well. In Islington, a large development of Council and private leaseholders underwent a refurb costing over £1m more than it should of. One old lady in her 80s was shocked to get a bill asking fer her share of the work, a staggering £28,000. Luckily, they went to the Leasehold Tribunal Service. The LTS ripped Islington Council's bill for the works apart. It appeared the Council had had contractors look at the worst blocks and then quote for all of them when not every block needed work doing to it.
The Council spent £177,000 on new roofs, whilst the LTS decided the real cost should have been £77,000. The LTS also decided that the rather large £60k bill for replacing all the windows should really have been only £10k. Add on all the other bits and pieces and the bill to the leaseholders dropped massively.

One interesting thing about the Councils was that a good number have contracts with private companies that see the Council getting back up to 50% of the profits made above a set point by the private contractors undertaking the work of maintaining the various blocks of flats. This gives the Council a large incentive to 'overprice' the work by 125%, thus meaning that the private leaseholders end-up paying for the whole job and earning the Council a stash of cash.

After watching this program, it makes me glad to be a leaseholder in a common-hold development. At least each flat owner owns an equal share of the management company that not only owns the freehold of the site, but is also responsible for hiring and firing the Management Company brought-in to do the day-to-day site management.