Rendall and Rittner hit Chelsea Bridge Wharf Leaseholders with £400,000 bill for fire safety

Also in this post: An update on electricity refunds and a note on the challenges for Chelsea Bridge Wharf residents in 2024.

In October 2023, this blog reported the letter from Rendall and Rittner which made vague threats about increased costs resulting from the new fire safety legislation. Service charge budgets just issued by Rendall and Rittner now make it clear what the scale of these costs, supposedly resulting from the Building Safety Act 2022, is likely to be, according to Rendall and Rittner. The budget documents issued for Eustace Building estimate expenditure (under heading of ‘Building Safety Act costs’ and also ‘Building Safety Costs’ under the heading of ‘professional fees’) of £58,986 for 2024 - this equates to around an additional £347 per flat annually on the service charge, or £29 per month (there are 170 flats approx. in Eustace).

If we scale these costs up for all of the (approximately) 1,150 properties at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, assuming the costs will be the same or similar for all blocks, then the total projected annual budget for the Building Safety Act is £399,023. It should be noted that this does NOT include adjustments to front doors which may be necessary as a result of recent inspections because these costs are to be billed INDIVIDUALLY to leaseholders (if changes are needed to their front door to make it compliant with the new legislation, then each leaseholder will pay for that individually) and therefore are not part of the block service charge. Rendall and Rittner are unable or unwilling to provide information on what the costs of a ‘door adjustment’ are likely to be. The firm who carried out the recent door inspections at CBW did not provide any cost information either, as yet. It seems the main ‘adjustment’ that would be needed to apartment front doors is to reduce the gap between front doors and the frames. The firm have said that in some cases at least this could be done by adjustment to the hinges. So in summary leaseholders will face an annual service charge increase of around £347 PLUS whatever the cost of adjustment to their own front door may be, if that is needed. These estimates are flat averages and do not take ”apportionment” into account (i.e. variation in the service charge according to size of flat). These costs will apply to all blocks but Warwick and Burnelli have an annual budget (created in March each year) so we will not know the estimated cost for Warwick and Burnelli for a few months, unless Rendall and Rittner care to give a special update. There is no obvious reason why these costs should vary greatly by block.

Are these costs justified?

Rendall and Rittner detail the duties and actions which they new legislation requires in the covering letter to the budget. These include annual inspection of apartment front doors and quarterly inspection of corridor/communal area fore doors, to ensure compliance. 43% of the new costs are attributed to creating the ‘Safety Case’ (Safety Case + Safety Case report). Rendall and Rittner state that:

”The “Safety Case” is the underlying information which we need to gather as evidence about the safety of the building. The Safety Case report will draw this information all together into a single document and assess the overall risk, as well as identifying any measures that need to be taken to improve safety routines. Rendall and Rittner will commission and co-ordinate the production of the Safety Case using an external independent specialist company. Included within this budget is a fee for the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) to review the Safety Case. At this stage, we know that the BSR fees are £144 per hour but not how long review will take. We have budgeted for up to 72 hours”. 

So clearly there are some unknowns and it is possible that not all of this budget would be needed (or equally it may be overspent). Rendall and Rittner also state that ”it is also unknown at this stage how soon the BSR will review the buildings at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, and so the fee has been included for 2024, but may not fall within the year, in which case this will show as unspent in the end of year accounts”. i.e. the review may not happen in 2024, in which case some of the costs would not be charged until the 2025 budget.

However, it seems that there is also a lot of overlap in these categories (e.g. ‘building safety regulator’ and ‘Safety Case Report’ and it is far from clear why Rendall and Rittner are charging a separate fee ‘for ’Building Safety Act Fee’ - why are these costs not included in their general fee and/or all the other charges which are budgeted.

What can we do about this?

I suggest that we need to have an independent expert review of these budgeted costs as soon as possible, to identify any unwarranted charges or areas that need closer inspection. This should be funded by the residents’ association (CBWRA) but unfortunately it would seem that they have less than £5,000 in the bank having wasted so much of residents’ cash (up to £9,000) on the doomed ‘management contract retendering’ in 2022 when they were still telling residents that Right to Manage was not possible and closing the CBW app accounts of those (such as myself who disagreed. Around £5,000 was also wasted on a ‘service charge audit’ which was never followed up with any meaningful action. Accounts submitted at companies house show a decline in CBWRA assets (i.e. cash) from £27,748 (January 2022) to £8,250 (Jan 2023) and the information recently circulated by CBWRA suggests that the CBWRA bank balance in November 2023 was in the region of £5,000, leading to CBWRA’s claim that the CBW app (annual cost £5,000) was ‘unsustainable’ and would be closed in Spring 2024, at the end of the current subscription, without any resident consultation, or the exploration of other possible sources of funding.

I guess that all CBWRA will do regarding these Building Safety Act charges is ask Urang (who are engaged by CBWRA/CBW RTM company to handle the Right to Manage application) to have an informal look at the budget and then take a very long time to feedback to residents and then only in the vaguest terms and mumble something about ‘After Right to Manage’. Such work (assessing the validity of charges for Building Safety Act by Rendall and Rittner) would probably not be included in Urang’s contract but we have no way to check because CBWRA have refused to allow residents (or apparently the CBWRA committee) to see the contract with Urang. Even though you as a leaseholder or resident cannot see the contract with Urang I think it is a fairly safe bet that Chris Garston/Garton-Jones have had their say on it but happy to be corrected if that is not the case.

I will be asking my network of residents at other developments to share information, to look for any inconsistences/differences which might give further insights (both in relation to other Rendall and Rittner managed developments and developments managed by other agents) and I am also working with residents at CBW to analyse this budget further.

Electricity Refunds

Residents may be aware that I have been looking into Rendall and Rittner’s handling of the electricity retendering processes for some time and working on electricity refunds, especially for residents of Warwick and Burnelli who are on an annual budget. The estate manager has said that he will now look at this in January. However it seems likely that the additional costs being budgeted for the Building Safety Act would cancel out any potential refund on electricity. Incidentally the CBWRA Co-Chair Louis Sebastian Kendall has recently claimed that he negotiated an electricity deal outside of the bulk retendering process but Rendall and Rittner do not seem to have any knowledge of this ‘amazing deal’ and state that the new contracts in Sep/Oct 23 were negotiated wholly within the bulk tendering process. It also seems to be the case that Chelsea Bridge Wharf has the same rates as other developments managed by Rendall and Rittner and there does not seem to be any evidence of CBWRA having obtained any advantage for Chelsea Bridge Wharf residents.

Here’s to a better 2024 at Chelsea Bridge Wharf – and how to ensure that happens

I hope all residents had a great Xmas. It is shame there was no Xmas Party but I guess the CBWRA C0-chairs, Larisa Villar Hauser and Louis-Sebastian Kendall committee did not want the humiliation of standing around the broken money pit, otherwise known as the fountains, or to be questioned about their dodgy consultation on same. Best Wishes for 2024 to all residents and please remember that with or without these new charges, and despite the ever increasing concentration of power in the hands of a few people on the CBWRA committee, the weakening of all democratic checks and balances in the CBWRA committee, the apparent financial difficulties of CBWRA and the continued censorship of those who have rightfully pointed out the huge mistakes of the CBWRA committee around Right to Manage, the continued online bullying on the app by ‘friends of the committee’ and ex-committee members, and a huge range of other issues including the absence of fair elections for committee or Directors of the Chelsea Bridge Wharf RTM, the complete absence of any action on solar power or increased sustainability, hopefully 2024 will be a year of positive change. At the very least the CBWRA committee have been forced to stop telling residents that Right to Manage is not possible, and that alone is a major step forward. An even bigger step forward would be a committee which was actually elected and which cared about what residents think, and did not act like a secret society or cabal. If you care about these issues and want a fair, transparent and democratic residents’ association as well as Right to Manage, please stand up and say so – this development belongs to residents, not to a few people on the CBWRA committee, not to Garton-Jones estate agents and not to those sad little people who seek to bully you into silence on the CBW app. If we get Right to Manage, and power is passed from freeholders to a few people in the CBWRA committee and their estate agent friends, and not shared with you as residents, then nothing will really have changed, Please get in touch if you want to join the grown ups, those who demand the right to discuss the issues that effect us and to have our voices heard.

Mike O’Driscoll 31.12.23

residents@chelseabridgewharf.org.uk