Hi Nigel
Thanks for your response.
I am not sure my first posting was particularly helpful.
Basically we have two issues.
The first is that because some of our owners have not paid their service charges, and as a result the service provider has not received full payment for services rendered,
(a) communal utility bills have not been paid;
(b) outstanding service fees have been off set against contingency funds.
We inherited a system (we are changing going forward) where the community does not have a collective agreement with the service provider. Instead each owner has their own agreement which is to pay fees in return for maintenance services. These services include payment by the service provider (covering the cost not just the act of payment) of communal utility bills. Fees paid by owners are therefore recorded against each owner's name.
Last year the service provider decided to collect contingency fees as well as basic service fees with the aim mof building up a contingency fund. People could pay up front for the whole year or pay by instalments.
The problem is where instalments are involved the servicve provider has not kept on top of fee collection and so at the end of the year some owners are in arrears. To ensure full payment for services rendered the service provider has off set contingency payments made earlier in the year against any outstanding fees not collected. This does not cover all the outstanding fees, however, because some owners have paid no fees.
As a result the community is losing out on these contingency payments and we have had to pay the utility bills to make sure our supply is not cut off.
I suspect that there is little we can do about this 'offsetting' provided there is no-cross subsidy between owners. But you may think otherwise? Do you think the service provider should allocate all contingency payments to the contingency fund regardless or only those where owners are not in arrears?
As far as the utility bills are concerned do you beleive these are still the service providers responsibility?
Happy to look at the documents you refer to but I am not sure they cover this sort of thing. We will probably need to take legal advice and if Louise reads this she may be able to help!
Ultimately our problem ostensibly comes from owners not paying their community fees (we don't have title deeds yet) but from what I have read there is very little communities can do about this except take legal action - which again costs money which most communities like us don't have. If everyone paid as they should then these problems would go away!
Frannie
