The Glasgow Homeowners’ Campaign represents all homeowners in Glasgow who have issues with GHA Ltd. in relation to home improvements and bills. We also help any homeowners in relation to issues with other factors.
We are here to help you. You can contact Sean Clerkin, Chairperson, Glasgow Homeowners’ Campaign, on 07948 010959.
Alumasc Swiss Laboratory External Wall Insulation System is the system of overcladding which has been put in to thousands of 4-in-a-blocks, maisonettes and deck access homes across Glasgow. This system, in its work specification, states that it is prone to water ingress, possibly causing dampness that could go into thousands of Glasgow homes. If you are concerned at this you should contact Glasgow Housing Association Ltd. (Tel. 0141-274-6200) and ask them to do a moisture test. This is done by taking out a 12″x12″ piece of overcladding at the top and bottom and testing with a moisture meter against a face block. This will help inform if any dampness has got into your home.
If you need more information, please contact Sean Clerkin on 07948-010959.
OFT finds significant problems in Scottish property management market
OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING News Release (12/09) issued by COI News Distribution Service. 12 February 2009
The OFT has today published a study into the Scottish property management market which has found that the market is not working well for consumers in Scotland.
Scottish property managers, also known as ‘factors’, manage common shared property such as roofs, staircases and gardens within tenements and other residential properties with a shared common space. Around 135,000 Scottish households rely on property management companies. The OFT’s study also looked at land maintenance companies which maintain open spaces, typically on new housing developments.
The OFT found that whilst the majority of people were happy with their property manager, around one in three said they were not. Two-thirds of consumers who had made a complaint about their management firm were dissatisfied with the way their complaint was handled.
The study says that:
* many people do not understand their complex legal rights and are unsure about the standard of service they should expect, and
* there is limited scope for redress when things go wrong, and
* owners rarely switch their property manager – and at the same time, there is little evidence of active competition between property management companies to attract business.
As a result of its findings, the OFT has today recommended:
* early implementation of a Scottish Government promoted self-regulatory scheme, with an independent complaints redress mechanism, to ensure better accountability of property managers for their standards. If this fails, a statutory scheme should be introduced, and
* the development of an advice and mediation service by the Scottish Government – available to owners and managing agents – to help overcome the legal complexities and prevent the breakdown of arrangements.
In addition, the OFT study found similar problems in the market for land maintenance companies, with consumers experiencing particularly extreme barriers to switching land maintenance suppliers when ownership of open spaces had been transferred to private companies.
Following discussion with the OFT, Consumer Focus Scotland has agreed in principle to support home owners to bring forward a test case applying legislation which may allow owners to switch land maintenance company. If this proves to be an impractical option for home owners, then the OFT recommends that the Scottish Government should review the legislation.
The OFT’s recommendations have now been submitted to the Scottish Government which has agreed to respond within 90 days.
John Fingleton, OFT Chief Executive, said:
‘This is a market that is not working well for many homeowners in Scotland. People often have little or no understanding about their rights, households rarely switch factors, suppliers do not seem to be actively competing with each other and the options for consumers when things go wrong are very limited. The OFT’s recommendations for change should be to the benefit of many Scottish consumers.’
NOTES
1. Download a copy of the OFT Market Study of Property Managers in Scotland from the OFT website – http://www.oft.gov.uk
http://www.oft.gov.uk.
2. In October 2007, Consumer Focus Scotland (formerly the Scottish Consumer Council) submitted evidence to the OFT which raised concerns about Scottish property managers. For more details about this go to the Scottish Property Managers webpage on the OFT website: http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/market- studies/current/scottish.
3. As part of its market study, the OFT commissioned Ipsos MORI to carry out a survey of flat owners to see how well the property managers market in Scotland was working from the perspective of consumers. In addition, the OFT sought information from property managers across Scotland, asking them to complete an online survey. To see this survey go to the Scottish Property Managers webpage on the OFT website:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/market- studies/current/scottish.
4. Consumers wishing to complain about residential property management services should in the first instance contact either Consumer Direct or their local Citizens Advice Bureaux for advice on how to deal with their concerns.
PUBLIC enquiries: 0845 7224499
enquiries@oft.gov.uk
OFT reports and consumer information leaflets are available free from:
OFT, PO Box 366, Hayes UB3 1XB 0800 389 3158 oft@ecgroup.uk.com
Posted in 1
Homeowners lobbied GHA
A GHA board meeting at the GHA offices in Trongate was lobbied by homeowners over charges for home improvements.
The Glasgow Homeowners Campaign made the discovery of charges after the social landlord issued itemised bills for repairs. The campaigners claim they were misled over the city-wide improvement plan with added management and contingency fee charges of six and three per cent – based on average bills ranging from s7000 to s14000 across 26000 properties.
Sean Clerkin, chair of the Glasgow Homeowners Campaign said: “What the GHA has done by not telling homeowners, for three years about management fees, shows a concerted attempt to mislead them.”
Homeowners can apply for 50 % up-to100 % grant from Government or in same instances, a loan from a council run scheme with Glasgow Credit Union that is means tested so do not guarantee full funding.
The GHA claim that 95 % of homeowners have already paid for their improvements within their required 12-month period.
For the 1300 homeowners with bills outstanding the issue is not just the cost but also a matter of transparency.
Sean Clerkin added: “We have campaigned for three years for a flexible payments scheme that will enable GHA factored homeowners to get longer than one year (current arrangement) to pay thousands of pounds for over cladding and re-roofing under the GHA’s improvement programme.
“We understand GHA agreed to discuss, for approval at its board meeting on Friday January 30, the introduction of a flexible payment scheme giving these homeowners a maximum of two years (interest free) to pay these bills for the GHA home improvements. We welcome this step forward and as a gesture, we will end our non-payment campaign.
Posted in GLASGOW HOMEOWNERS CAMPAIGN
ROOF SLATES FOR RE-SALE - KILORAN STREET, G46. GHA FACTORED HOMEOWNERS HAVE BEEN SLATED FOR TOO LONG!
THE PRICE OUR GOOD OLD SCOTTISH SLATE, TAKEN FROM OUR ROOFS, SELL TO THE TRADE MARKET AT 35 – 50p PER SLATE, AND WE WERE FORCED TO ACCEPT THAT MARLEY TILE CR*P THAT FALLS OF IN A SLIGHT BREEZE !
GHA(m) were asked if homeowners would receive a rebate on their re-roofing bill; given the re-sale of their old roofing slates by the contractor!
GHA(m) stated that NO rebate would be given.
Posted in FACTORED HOMEOWNERS
HUNDREDS OF furious homeowners are demanding a full refund and “unqualified” apology from Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) this weekend after it emerged the landlord had been charging them undisclosed fees for home improvements.
The Glasgow Homeowners Campaign (GHC) made the discovery after the social landlord supplied homeowners with itemised bills for repairs for the first time last month. The campaigners claim GHA wilfully misled them over the cost of its city-wide home improvement programme by “hiding” a 6% management fee and a 3% contingency fee in the homeowners’ original estimates, which only listed roofing, rendering and VAT charges. Based on average bills ranging from £7000-£14,000 across 26,000 properties, these fees amount to a total cost to homeowners of between £11 million and £21m.
Sean Clerkin, the chairman of the GHC, said: “What the GHA has done by not telling homeowners for three and a half years about management fees amounts to a lie of omission and shows very clearly that there has been a concerted attempt to mislead homeowners. This proves the need for a full and independent financial enquiry.”
The £650m scheme to upgrade the city’s public sector housing stock began in 2005, but only homeowners were able to vote in favour of renovations. As GHA votes on behalf of its renting tenants, they are not liable to pay. In many cases this has meant homeowners in a block where the majority of residents are tenants being overruled by GHA and forced to meet their share of improvements despite voting against the measures.
Although they can apply for a 50% or 100% grant from the Scottish government and, in some cases, financial assistance from a council-run scheme with Glasgow Credit Union, both are means-tested so do not guarantee funding.
According to GHA, 95% of the homeowners have already paid for their improvements in full within the required 12-month period following the receipt of a bill for the works. For the 1300 homeowners with bills outstanding, however, the point of contention now is not the cost itself but the fact they feel their agent has breached its fundamental duty of honesty and transparency – a breach they argue amounts to “fraud” and entitles them to be reimbursed for the management fee.
Mike Dailley, a solicitor at Govan Law Centre, believes they may have a case. “If they were being charged bills and they’ve effectively been charged for something they never consented to, then there is a question mark there over whether they might be in breach of their fiduciary duty. One could have a potential claim on that basis.
“This now makes urgent the case for adding GHA to the Freedom of Information schedule. The Scottish government did introduce a statutory instrument to change FoI recently, but they’ve not done that yet and I think they just need to be questioned why.
“The GHA are not acting in a way any reasonable landlord would act.”
However, Paul Brown, a solicitor at Legal Services Agency, is more sceptical. He said: “I would think the management fee would only really be attackable if it was an excessive amount for the work done.”
He added: “The basic contractual argument sounds fairly weak because even if they were misled, if they actually got the benefit of the management then they’ll have to pay on that basis. The contingency fee should be reimbursed, though, if it doesn’t end up needing to be used, so you need a detailed account of the contingency fund.”
Glasgow Liberal Democrat MSP Robert Brown believes that while the fees themselves are legal, the fact they were initially undisclosed is a cause for concern. “Whatever the rights and wrongs of whether it’s there or not, the whole thing points to the inadequacy of the arrangements for taking instructions for people who are, after all, your principals in the legal sense,” he said.
“A contingency allowance is probably quite reasonable and standard practice for these types of contracts but, again, the issue is whether it’s being used properly or just used in a way which, if you like, soaks up any oddities there may be for the sake of peace and quiet.”
The row is the latest twist in a three-year battle between the landlord and homeowners over the management of the home improvement scheme, which they contend has been poorly run and overly expensive. Last year, Communities Scotland carried out an inspection into the scheme, with mixed conclusions. While it found that the association had procured its contracts “in line with good practice and EU requirements” – contrary to homeowners’ claims that contractors were charging inflated rates – it did identify weaknesses in monitoring contractors and communicating with owners, leading to the introduction of the itemised bills demanded by homeowners.
However, its replacement body, the Scottish Housing Regulator, has rejected calls for an independent financial inquiry and campaigners’ attempts to take their case to Audit Scotland are precluded by GHA’s charitable status.
A spokesperson for GHA said the landlord is “caught between a rock and a hard place” when it comes to balancing the interests of its tenants and homeowners: “To ensure that our tenants are not used to underwrite costs for homeowners, we charge owners a modest administration fee of 6%, which is significantly lower than the 10%-12% management fee charged by most factors.”
Sandra White, SNP MSP for Glasgow, believes that an independent inquiry is the only way to draw a line under the three-year debacle.
She said: “I think we need to have an investigation basically to make the people who are accountable, be accountable. The perceived problem is that many of the people who are now within the Scottish Housing Regulator were actually appointed by the previous executive to set up and work in the GHA, so I think there could be a conflict of interest in that.
“We’ve managed to move forward and get these bills broken down, but as we’ve got further and further into GHA we’re discovering something new every day. They’re duty-bound to tell homeowners what they’re charging them for, but they’d never have known about these fees if we hadn’t fought for it, which is why we have to keep fighting.”
Your GHA Factor, is responsible for general management and administration of the common property.
In law, the Factor has the power to: -
They provide the following specific services to factored properties: -
We will develop further services in line with needs identified by our customers.
For minor works under threshold limits, the Deed gives the Factor power to instruct these works and recover costs from owners without consultation.
We can also instruct works above the threshold limits, for the immediate protection of any person or the property, pending a decision being taken by owners on permanent remedial works.
In 2005, GHAM introduced an enhancement to our repair service. This gives customers early warning of works and the chance to query anything you are not happy with before your bill arrives. This service has been well received by customers.
Minor jobs will be carried out at one visit and you will be advised by a ‘job completion’ card that work has been carried out. A few days later you will receive an ‘owner occupier inspected repair costs proforma’. This will detail the work description and the total cost of the repair. Note: Your share of the total will only be shown when you get the bill.
For owners living within deck access and multi-storey flats with concierge – please check on your communal notice board. Owners living within these types of properties will be advised of minor repair work, the work content and cost, via the notice board at the concierge station. This is the most cost effective way of delivering this information.
Threshold Limits
GHA should write to owners to seek consent for a repair if the cost is over the
property threshold limits.
Threshold limits are generally :
Four-in-a-block – £200 plus VAT
Tenements – £2,000 plus VAT
Flats associated with shops – £2,000 plus VAT
Multi-storey/deck access – £2,000 & £5,000 (varies) plus VAT
If it is found that the work will exceed the threshold, the contractor will provide details of the total costs and you will receive a letter seeking majority consent to proceed.
We request a response from owners within 10 days to ensure work can be authorised promptly. However, work will only proceed if the majority of owners at the property consent to the repair. We will write to advise you of the outcome of the consultation process. If we do receive majority consent, the work will be authorised to proceed.
If authority cannot be obtained, then we will generally be unable to have the repair carried out and owners will be notified of this. Failure to have necessary work carried out can de-value your property or result in deterioration, which is likely to cost more to correct in the longer term.
 | Glasgow Homeowners C… on info@gsohc.co.uk |
From the 