The lease is the contract that governs what can be charged and what cannot be charged to leaseholders. Those charges have to reflect the actual work incurred on each estate.
Accent Housing, since 2017, have deliberately ignored the terms of all leases acoss it's entire portfolio of leasehold and shared ownership properties and simply dumped it's corporate costs onto leaseholders. Their reasoning: 'it is more convenient for them to do so as the people involved with the management deal with a number of leasehold schemes'.
To put it simply; do less charge more'.
Accent Housing consistently choose to defend an untenable position, at a cost to leaseholders, rather than take responsibility for their actions.
Accent's approach is nicely summed up in the words of an ex employee:
'Accent are compulsive liars and will do anything to shirk their responsibilities.'
Those management fees have been ruled impermissible by the High Court. Full ruling
Every leaseholder and shared owner, including the many that have left and taken the right to manage, are entitled to have their historic management fees reviewed and a refund processed.
This problem extends beyond just management fees. It extends to ground maintenance (simply a global contract), accountancy charges (a flat fee per unit), warden call maintenance (price per property irrespective of what work is involved). The list goes on.
81% OF ALL REPAIR WORK WAS FABRICATED
At Lambert Court in York 81% of all repair work charged was fabricated.
The charges bore no relation to the work involved. This practice will have extended across the entire North East region involving the contract with ESH Construction (and Ian Williams). It is easily proven but despite assurances made by Sarah Ireland no investigation of mal practice was ever implemented.
All those leaseholders will have experienced an unlawful increase in repair costs of 80% since 2017 and yet Accent Housing refuse to acknowledge how serious this problem is and undertake a thorough investigation.
They quietly removed ESH Construction from a long term contract without any explanation given to leaseholders.
The response by Julie Wittich was interesting considering not a single invoice for work to Lambert court was genuine.
..... 'I have been very clear that there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that any fraud has taken place in relation to transactions with our contractors.'
REALLY...and based on what evidence was that conclusion reached?....
It is important to remember why this matters.
It is simply financial abuse of vulnerable communities. It is abuse of power. Governance is ineffectual. Board members are simply passive attendees collecting a financial reward while completely failing to protect those that need protection most.
This abuse of power was the fundamental problem in the case of the Post Office scandal. There are great similarities.
Accent Housing need to contact all those estates including those that have left for right to manage and inform them of the decision of the High Court. They then need to process repayments to all those estates as they simply cannot, legally, justify a single penny spent on management of those estates.
There has to be an investigation into all repair work undertaken by ESH Construction as those leaseholders who were affected will all have been overcharged.
Of course they won't do this....
HISTORY SHOWS...
In 2005 and 2007 there were two separate FTT cases concerning an estate in Hemlington managed by Accent Housing. The FTT ruled in favour of the leaseholder on both occasions. The issues related to both fictitious service charge costs and inflated management fees. The crux of the case is that the FTT ruled that Accent could not charge 6x the management fee to Leaseholders versus tenants on the same estate for the provision of identical services, as it was not allowed under the lease agreements.
Despite these two rulings by the FTT Accent continued to charge the elevated charges for the next 15 years.
This continued until 2019 when one resident wrote an open letter to the entire Accent Board when he became aware of financial irregularities on a Yarm estate 8 miles away. They were also paying management fees in excess of 100% of service charge costs.
That full letter makes really interesting reading:
Again it just shows how the entire board were informed of mal practice and failed to respond.
Grant Thornton identified material misstatements in July 2018 yet Accent still billed all other North East estates the elevated costs despite knowing them to be significantly inflated. In essence Accent Housing had to be running two sets of accounts one for the reduced charges on two properties and one for the elevated charges on the remaining estate.
I believe this is the reason Grant Thornton cancelled their contract with Accent Housing.
Three accountancy firms have signed off the end of year statements and requests made under section 21(1) LTA 1985.
Those statements are meant to provide some form of reassurance on financial probity. They do no such thing. Those certificates are self certified by Accent Housing and have been signed off without reference to a single lease.
Emails from Accent's former financial director, David Royston, acknowledge that there was only ever a 'sample' lease available. By definition such a document cannot exist as each lease is specific to each estate.
Those accountancy practices would have been aware of this and yet they blindly continue to sign off without question all those end of year statements presented to them by Accent Housing.
COPPEN ESTATES
Accent Housings entire accountancy bill totalling £29,760 for service charge accounts for the year ending 2019 were raised on behalf of a freeholder Coppen Estates. Grant Thornton were responsible for the 'auditing' of those accounts. No questions were raised.
Coppen Estates are frequently referenced in parliamentary debates as an example of one of the more "egregious freehold investors". They also go by the name of PAS property services.
...."freeholders who will not comply with any legislation, or will try to avoid it, do not reply to letters. I have exchanged information with the Minister for Housing, on how to deal with Coppen Estates."
"I have referred to Coppen Estates in my constituency, which is notorious for simply not replying to letters. I once got it to reply to a recorded letter at the third time of asking. Normally, it ignores everything.That is just its way of trying to hang on to its ground rents and its income from leases."
...we have debated the iniquities of Coppen Estates extensively, and I repeat that it is treating my constituents in a way that is inappropriate
...Clive Betts is being brushed off by some leasehold sector bottom-feeders like the Pennington family who own Coppen Estates.
It simply begs the question - why would Accent Housing raise their accountancy bill under the guise of Coppen Estates?
PREPARATION OF SERVICE CHARGE ACCOUNTS.
The review of material presented by a housing association to an accountancy firm which culminates in the presentation of the end of year statement is governed by specific rules.
Those rules are laid out under a document that recognises the importance of the lease.:
2.3 The service charge statement will always need to include details of the costs incurred in the accounting period in relation to the property in accordance with the property lease.
2.8 Care should be taken to ensure that any certificate or statement follows the exact terminology used in the lease.
Accent Housing have shown complete disregard to the very fundamental legal premise that charges presented to leaseholders are governed by each specific lease and that charges can only be applied for the work actually incurred on each estate.
An accountancy firm cannot make any judgements on the validity of a single charge without reference to the specific conditions within each lease and yet all these charges are simply signed off and placed upon leaseholders.
Accent Housing continue to falsely declare to its auditors, Beever and Struthers, that the allocation of costs are in terms of the leases while being aware that they are not.
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
In late 2022 Accent Housing acknowledged the problem it had with access to individual leases and began to collate the numerous leases across it's leasehold properties into what they refer to as the 'lease review service plan'.
The idea is to centralize all the leases into a highQ (virtual) dataroom. Essentially it trying to reverse engineer the availability of leases for inspection.
"Accent failed to produce documents justifying the management fee by reference to a detailed breakdown of management costs specific to Langley House"
The problems of a failure to conform to the conditions of the lease and the inability to prove direct costs were raised during the tribunal hearing in 2018. Accent Housing were aware then of the problems.
Disturbingly an email was sent on 26th March 2021 to Caroline Monk of Beevers and Struthers, Shaun Finnegan, Robert Bloom (head of leasehold) and Tom Miskell, (Chair of the board).
"How can Accent Housing; charge a management fee disconnected from the costs, applied arbitrarily by Accent whose classification defies any logic?"
This followed on from an email sent specifically to Tom Miskell, Chair of the board with one simple question.
"…how are charges formulated …which bear no relation to the actual work undertaken on the estate?"
Shaun Finnegan's reply on behalf of Tom Miskell beggars belief.
"I am unsure as to why you believe that charges bear no relation to work carried out on the estate."
As it turned out the High Court agreed that charges do bear no relation to work carried out on the estate.
The entire board have known of all these issues and consistently failed to take any action to protect those residents from financial abuse.
One director Richard Wilkinson was even aware of these practices on the very estate he lives on (he happens to be a leaseholder under Accent). His response - "Accent are allowed to do this". Richard Wilkinson is paid almost £10,000 to attend around 15 meetings. Astounding!
The F word