Apparent Unjust Court Decision

Questions about living in properties with shared/common facilities
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Fridgability
Posts: 1
Joined: 21 Oct 2013 01:20

Apparent Unjust Court Decision

Post by Fridgability »

We own a house on a small complex of seven town houses, Part of a development including six individual villas. It was registered as a jointly owned building because all properties share a private access road. The villas have their own pools and have no rights of access over the complex pool or gardens. There is no other shared property other than the access road, no bio plant or street lighting etc.

One owner on our complex had not paid any communal charge for three years until legal proceedings were at an advanced stage, and then only a fraction of what was owed. Various reasons were put forward for not paying, eventually insisting that the villa owners should pay for the upkeep of our pool and gardens over which they have no right of access. Therefore the owner indicated that he should pay approximately 6% rather than 13% which represents that owners share of the complex communal charge. Not surprisingly the villa owners have no intention of paying for the complex pool and gardens, and as a committee we would not expect them to.

Our title deeds indicate clearly that only the town houses have rights of access to the communal pool and adjoining areas. This information does not appear on the deeds of the villas, and yet a judge has just ruled that the complex expenses should be shared with the villas, and because their covered area is collectively greater than the town houses, they would be paying the larger share.

It is early days, having only just received the judgment and are awaiting the findings translated into English. We are considering our options. But as things stand, knowing full well that we can only collect a fraction of our expenses, we as the committee, are at a loss to know how we are supposed to fund the necessary outgoings such as communal insurance, pool maintenance, water, electricity and garden contractors.

We would be most interested to hear from anyone who has experienced a similar situation and any remedies taken.
Nigel Howarth
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Re: Apparent Unjust Court Decision

Post by Nigel Howarth »

Hi Fridgability and welcome to the forum.

I expect the judge's decision was a result of the jointly-owned building being incorrectly recorded at the Land Registry. (Unfortunately, I cannot check this for you at the moment as the Land Registry database is still being repaired following a cyber attack.)

The six individual villas should have been partitioned from the rest of the building as described in section 38J on page 6 of the jointly-owned building law. This would have prevented them having to pay for the complex pool and gardens.

I'll send you an email requesting the information I need to check my thoughts on the matter. But I will not be able to check until the Land Registry database has been repaired.

Regards,
Nigel Howarth
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