Q. My landlord has told me that he intends to renew the roof of the block of flats in which I live at considerable expense. Although my lease says I must contribute towards these costs via a service charge payment, I'm not sure a full repair is required. Can I challenge these works?
A. A landlord of residential property needs to be extremely careful when carrying out repair works as there are complex regulations which can trip him up. If a landlord gets it wrong, then he may not be able to claim all, or any, of the costs from his tenants.
A landlord has a duty to consult with his tenants about repairs. He must seek estimates and allow the tenants to inspect and comment upon these. He must also notify the tenants of the contractor selected and the reasons for this. If a landlord breaches these provisions he could end up getting nothing towards the repair costs.
Also, residential service charges are only recoverable to the extent that they are reasonable. Therefore, in the case of your roof repair, you could challenge this upon numerous grounds such as, for example, the roof doesn't need to be repaired, or if it does, a patch repair would suffice or, assuming a full repair is needed, the costs of the works are excessive. You could even argue that the works were not done to a reasonable standard.
Finally, although this does not appear to be relevant in your case, if a service charge bill is sent out 18 months after the works were done and the tenant hasn't previously been told about the works, then the landlord will be unable to recover the costs of those works.
For specialist advice contact Keith Swan of Patterson, Glenton & Stracey Solicitors by email at ks@pgslaw.co.uk or by telephone on 0808 231 7043. Patterson, Glenton & Stracey Solicitors have provided legal advice to the people of South Tyneside for over 125 years. For details of their full range of services and to view previous Gazette articles please log on to www.pgslaw.co.uk . Patterson, Glenton & Stracey Solicitors: The Logical Answer
