Offering comprehensive coverage of the law in an area where disputes have become increasingly common, Service Charges and Management:
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Examines the topic from both a landlord’s and a tenant’s perspective
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Provides detailed analysis of legislation and case law, identifying the types of dispute that arise most frequently, and advising on ways of dealing with them
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Considers in-depth the major impact of the service charges provisions in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, RICS Residential Service Charge Management Code (2008) and the RICS Commercial Service Charge Management Guide (2007)
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Advises on how to deal with a range of different service charge disputes
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Covers dispute resolution through LVTs, the courts and arbitration
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Incorporates worked examples based on the types of disputes that actually occur
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Includes, completely new for this edition, a materials CD with all relevant legislation, forms and precedents, enabling easy drafting and customisation of documents
Foreword:
For the two million (or so) people who own leasehold dwellings (and the hundreds of thousands of business tenants), good quality leasehold management is of the first importance. But sadly, survey after survey shows dissatisfaction on the part of many leaseholders at the poor quality of the services they receive and associated concerns over the cost. One source of difficulty is that many leases were not drafted properly: in some cases the leases are ambiguous over the rights and the duties of landlords and the leaseholders; in others the leases fail to deal adequately with the most basic issues, such as the proportion of the individual leaseholder's contributions towards the costs of managing the premises. Similar concerns can affect mixed-use buildings as well as commercial premises.
From a different perspective, the difficulties of interpreting some leases may inhibit good management by landlords or their appointed agents. Or leaseholders exercising the right to manage the premises might encounter major difficulties in setting and recovering the costs of repairing, insuring and maintaining the building.
With these concerns in mind, Parliament has, over the years, enacted important statutory rights for residential leaseholders. These range from the rights to be consulted over major works and other service charge expenditure, to rights to have poorly drafted leases varied, to applying for a manager to be appointed and to acquire the freehold by court order.
A major overhaul of these statutory rights and obligations was made by Part 2 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 in order to make them more workable. That Act also introduced additional protections against forfeiture of leases, new rights in relation to insurance and to administration charges. It also introduced a new statutory no-fault based right for leaseholders to take over management of their block of flats through a new right to manage.
Parallel to these developments is the growing role of the Residential Property Tribunal as the forum for the determination of so many residential leasehold disputes. It is this tribunal (and on appeal the Lands Tribunal) which is now at the forefront of leasehold management disputes rather than the courts.
Of course, most of these reforms were achieved by amending the existing legislation, the Landlord and Tenant Acts of 1985 and 1987 in particular, and the regulations made under that legislation. So, whilst the statutory rights and obligations have been modernised and expanded, part of the price for this is a very complex set of statutory rules which is not always easy to interpret or to apply to individual cases. There is a pressing case for consolidation and simplification of this legislation.
When the first edition of this work appeared just three years ago, it quickly established itself as a leading commentary and source of guidance for practitioners and their clients. I am delighted to have been invited to contribute a foreword to the second edition of this important work. As with the first edition it has been written by a team of barristers from Tanfield Chambers. It takes account of the developments in the past three years, including tribunal and court decisions and of the new codes of practice (the Residential Service Charge Management Code 2009 and the Service Charges in Commercial Property Code of Practice 2007).
As before, it is clearly written and provides a busy practitioner with a detailed and comprehensive account of the relevant law and practice. Another important feature of the work is the statutory materials and various forms and precedents which appear as appendices.
This new edition is published in hard back form and purchasers will also have a separate set of materials on a CD-ROM.
I am sure that this new edition will continue to be an indispensable guide for all of us who advise on leasehold management issues.
Professor James Driscoll
Trowers & Hamlins
July 3, 2009
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