Hundred words that reveal a sorry tale of housing incompetence

Published: 22 October, 2010

• FOLLOWING my letter concerning defective Section 20B notices (Waiting for my bill... October 15), three leaseholders have sent me copies of their notices. You will recall that S20B notices, issued under the 1985 Landlord and Tenant Act, are a legal procedure allowing a landlord to issue a bill outside the 18-month period allowed for collection of the debt. If this notice is defective then the landlord is unable to recover the cost of works.

It is my view that the three S20B notices issued by Homes for Islington (HfI) in 2009 are invalid in that they do not meet criteria set down by a 2007 decision at the Lands Tribunal. Using the Freedom of Information Act, I have discovered that almost 3,000 HfI leaseholders were issued with S20B notices between 2007 and 2010. The council declined to provide figures for the preceding years on the grounds of cost. However, these too are likely to have been invalidly drafted. 

 The 2007 Lands Tribunal decision also found against Islington Council on a second count: that of the consultation procedures followed. The fault here was in the consultation rules governing competitive bids which operated before 2002, when the law changed. Consultation procedures taking place on ‘framework’ or monopoly contracts entered into by the council after 2002 are not thought to be defective, but nevertheless could be irrelevant in any determination of liability to pay because of a defective S20B.

The pre-2002 paperwork on consultation, however, is defective in my opinion. Provided that the leaseholder has not agreed that the bill was legitimate, there is a remedy through “set-off” against future bills at the leasehold valuation tribunal.

Leaseholders have suffered an appalling injustice at the hands of an incompetent housing management. It is perhaps some sort of sublime justice that this same management will have proved itself comprehensively incompetent by failing to understand just 100 words in the Lands Tribunal decision. 

MICHAEL READ
Milner Square, N1