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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

CRC Efficiency Scheme

David Goddard notes that a further imposition has been put on Landlords and Tenants with the Governments CRC Efficiency Scheme, as this article by by Reynolds Porter Chaimberlain explains.

The CRC Energy Efficiency scheme is a mandatory scheme affecting the whole of the UK, which requires participants to annually buy and surrender allowances priced in pounds per tonne to cover the amount of CO2 a participant emits each year. It is part of the 2008 Climate Change Act, which was introduced to try to meet the Government’s target of reducing greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. The scheme’s main purpose is to drive down energy consumption.

Read the full article here

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Service charges: an end to bad practice at handover?

Michael Wear of Bond Pearce writes that the RICS intends to tighten up on the proceedures relating to service charges, when there is a change of agent. Often the final reconciliation of the service charge accounts at the date of hand over is not fully completed because the property is no longer the responsibility of the transferring agent and there may be fears about receiving payment for this work.

Ian Stubbs

Read the full article here

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

What is a “fair” apportionment of service charges?

Another legal decision has been published in an article by Shoosmiths about the ‘fair’ apportionment of service charges between tenants in a new build development of residential flats.

The article concludes:

It is important that landlords and managing agents consult before setting service charge levels because in this case, the service charges amounted to more than 100% of the landlords costs.  This encouraged the tenants to seek a legal decision to vary their leases in order to adjust the apportionment between the leaseholders to a more “fair” share.

This decision should not be seen as a get out of jail card for landlords in getting the service charge percentages wrong, provided they all add up to 100%. Rather, it highlights the difficulties in calculating fair service charge proportions especially when dealing with premises of different sizes and in larger estates where different parts get the benefit of different services.

It is in no one’s interests that tenants should feel aggrieved by what they perceive as an unfair service charge, and in new developments in particular it should be possible to avoid this. An essential element of doing so is a robust analysis of the service charge as early as possible in the scheme.

Read the full article here.

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