Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust

Two leaseholders recently made separate but similar requests to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT) to rule on the fairness of our annual leasehold service charges.

The LVT is a government body which has the power to rule on the fairness of service charges and its decisions are legally binding. A summary of their decisions on these two recent cases is as follows:

Issues that directly affect all leaseholders

• For the 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10 years, both the  administration and the management fees set by the Trust are reasonable and are payable.
• The 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10 administration and management fees set by the Trust do not include charges for anything they shouldn’t.
• The cost in the 08/09 year of the KPMG audit of the service charges introduced by the Trust is a service chargeable item, was reasonably incurred, and is payable by all leaseholders in the manner in which it has been charged.

The LVT noted that the Trust has previously recognised that an error was made in the original calculation of the 08/09 statement figure for insurance. This was a double-counting of the Insurance Premium Tax of 5% and the Trust had promised to correct it. This has already been done and a refund has been made to all leaseholders in the 2010/11 service charge account.

Issues that affect only the block of flats relating to one of the applicants

• The applicant’s curtilage (the area around each block on his site) as defined by the Trust is reasonable. The grass cutting charges introduced by the Trust for leaseholders for the 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10 years are therefore reasonable and are payable.
• Due to some responsive repairs descriptions lacking full clarity, a nominal 10% discount in the repairs costs should be given to the leaseholders of the applicant’s site and block, for the 08/09 year only.

 The full LVT decisions can be downloaded here:

Hearing 3796-17

Hearing 3796-18

For more information, see LVT Decisions.