Estate Management Legal Challenge

Prior to the Right to Manage (RTM), the estate charges in our service charge were under £12 a month per apartment. Since the RTM, Contour has revised these charges for Wharfside leaseholders so that they are more than £30 per month. This fund is to raise money to launch a legal challenge against Contour regarding these charges.

There are 2 key components to the challenge.

1) That the increased management fee is not reasonable for just managing the bins, car park, trees and lawns

2) Additional charges e.g. reserve fund have been added to our estate charge but not to the charges asked of Millside, Cottonside, and Trencherfield Mill. This is against the terms of the lease which calls for a fair allocation of costs between all 4 buildings.

We raised money as part of a prior crowd fund to fund a legal challenge to replace the lifts and give legal assistance to setting up the RTM. We still have funds left from this campaign so will be putting it towards this challenge and this will cover the contribution from leaseholders who made these donations.

We ask though that, if you did not contribute to the RTM campaign but want to be part of this challenge, you contribute a £100 to this challenge via this crowd funding campaign. We are making either donating now or having donated before a requirement to join this campaign.

We believe we have a strong case. If we do not challenge them now, we are potentially faced with these high charges on an ongoing basis

Some people have asked, surely I do not need to contribute as if it the challenge is successful the estate charges will be lowered for all. We do not believe this to be the case. In other tribunals we have been party to the reduction has only been given to parties to the tribunal application and not the wider leaseholder group.