Victory for service charge campaign

News

Victory for service charge campaign

Monday, 14 September 2009

Steve Rice

By Greg Truscott

CAMPAIGNING leaseholders have won a momentous victory against a town hall and its trouble-plagued social housing firm.

More than 9,000 leaseholders living in Labour-controlled Lambeth have cause to celebrate after a small group successfully challenged huge hikes in service charges.

Lambeth Living, the firm set up by Labour councillors to manage the council’s housing stocks, had attempted to impose price hikes on leaseholders living on council estates for services such as communal cleaning and CCTV.

Some leaseholders received estimated bills with 2,000 per cent increases in charges.

But, thanks to a tireless campaign led by leaseholder Steve Rice from the Ethelred Estate in Kennington, the council and Lambeth Living have now agreed to recalculate all service charge bills after an independent audit revealed more than 50 per cent were wrong.

Mr Rice said: “We said all along that Lambeth Living had just plucked these figures out of the air and we have been proved right.

“We shouldn’t have had to put in so much time and effort to achieve this commonsense outcome.

“Lambeth Living just didn’t want to listen and we had to work hard to get the council to call in the independent auditors whose investigation proved we were being ripped off.

“We have endured dozens of meetings where Lambeth Living staff told us we had got it all wrong.

"But we were right and now we want to see a public apology.”

Lambeth Living staff are now recalculating service charge bills for leaseholders across the borough.

A spokeswoman said: “We’ve already trained more staff to complete this work and we aim to adjust the accounts and to contact leaseholders individually by next month.

“We’re absolutely committed to getting on top of this situation and we will be acting on issues raised.”

Email: greg.truscott@slp.co.uk