Recently a thread has appeared on this site regarding Right to Manage, with an apparently unhappy leaseholder objecting to either the principle of Right to Manage, or the company involved in the RTM process or seeing no need to undertake a Right to Manage at all?
People should understand what a Right to Manage really is?
Any development has to be maintained according to the terms of the lease.
A managing agent will be appointed by the freeholder/landlord to carry this out.
Unfortunately where a managing agent has connections to the freeholder, pressure is put on the managing agent to increase revenue streams and direct those funds back to the freeholder.
If the freeholder has financial problems so the pressure increases for the managing agent to find ever more inventive ways of increasing revenue to sate the financial thirst of the freeholder.
This pressure leads to the unlawful price fixing scandal, overcharging, and now the latest double charging of account preparation fees.
It also leads to a record fine for breaches of Health & Safety legislation that resulted from the death of an elderly resident in the fire at Gibson Court.
This is the story of Firstport who find themselves in the position of owing a venture capitalist the princely sum of £81m folowing a secretive bailout and only after directors had to put their own money in to allow Firstport to keep trading.
No one truly wants to manage their development,and that is not the object of a Right to Manage?
It is simply about choice?
Do residents want to have the freedom to choose a managing agent of their choice and let them manage, or are they hasppy to stay with a company appointed by a connected freeholder who has systemically cheated them for many years, whose service is rated by many as abysmal and who have to find an extra £81m from rsidents to pay back their loans?
Some residents have in the past carried out a Right to Manage and have reapointed Firstport and suddenly their charges have decreased. So horses for courses.
But the fact that the residents have the ability to sack Firstport is a powerful incentive for Firtstport to behave.
It should be noted that currently the Firstport management portfolio shows that only 19% of their appointments are from residents freely appointing them to manage, whilst an astonishing 81% are self appointments from connected companies or as a result of deals with developers that are too good to be true.
