Rendall and Rittner ‘Late Payment’ charges rise by 277%
The author of this blog noted in early May 2021, while helping a resident with a query about service charges, that the Rendall and Rittner ‘late payment fee’ had mysteriously risen from £18 to £50. amounting to an increase of 277%. I raised this with Rendall and Rittner and initially had an unhelpful reply which did not actually give any meaningful information or rationale for the increases other than that Rendall and Rittner had increased their costs regarding late payments. I have pressed them further and asked for evidence of how they calculated their costs around late payments and how may such payments they have levied in the last 12 months at Chelsea Bridge Wharf.
The leases do allow for recovery of reasonable costs associated with late payment but I think it would be very hard to argue that this increase is reasonable and therefore, if challenged at tribunal, I think Rendall and Rittner would not have a strong case.
I am in touch with residents at other developments on this issue as clearly it is not just something effecting Chelsea Bridge Wharf. I am optimistic that Rendall and Rittner will see reason on this and reverse this massive and unjustified hike, but if not then I think it would be successful at tribunal. Please feel free to get in touch if you wish to discuss further.
Would be interested to keep in touch and learn more. Our (fairly) new build block of flats iis managed by R&R and we do have plenty issues.
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Thanks D. Please see link to join mailing list here https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/2021/07/11/rendall-and-rittner-action-network/ and please also sign petition if not done so already. Will be very happy to have a chat next week perhaps.
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Chelsea Bridge Wharf wrote on 19/11/2021 12:27:
> WordPress.com vincit veritas commented: “Thanks D. Please see link to > join mailing list here > https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/2021/07/11/rendall-and-rittner-action-network/ > and please also sign petition if not done so already. Will be very > happy to have a chat next week perhaps. ” > Thanks. I have signed the petition and put my name on the mailing list.
My situation seems to be rather different from that of many of you, but we still have R&R as managing agents, and they are troublesome. One of our residents actually said to someone there “If I were your employer you would have been sacked)>
I’m in a new build (completed Summer 2019) block of flats for the over-60s. Partly because of the pandemic, sales have been slow. Only about a third of the flats have been sold, which means that the developers (LifeStory, formerly Pegasus) are carrying two-thirds of the service charge, and a formal Residents’ Committee cannot yet be set up.
I think the residents are not clear as to what aspects of management rest with LifeStory, and which with R&R. For instance, I believe the day staff are employed by LS, the night staff by R&R.
We certainly have problems with R&R. My specific issue is that they acknowledged back in February that they were using the wrong percentage in calculating my service charge (they said it was rounding error between two of their systems, but to me the difference was too great to be rounding error). They corrected the figure for 2021-22, though in a rather unsatisfactory manner. But I am still trying to get them to make the correction for 2019-20 and 2020-21 and mostly get no reply to my emails. It’s a small amount, only about £100, but still.
Also they insist on producing the accounts in a typeface too small to read. I can understand that they want to produce them on a single sheet of paper, but the result is that we then have to ask for them to be reissued in a readable form. A competent firm would not need to be told each year.
They do list all the expenses, and provide a general explanation. But we don’t really know whether the firms they employ are good ones, with reasonable charges, etc.
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I would make sure to do a section 22 request and inspect invoices and receipts . R&R tend to have ‘preferred’ (ahem) suppliers who are often unaccountably more expensive than others
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