If You don’t Pay Your Charges
What will
happen if you don’t pay your service charges
Under clause 1 of the standard lease
agreement, you must pay the following.
a Ground
Rent (on 1 April each year).
b Your share
of the insurance for the block (on 30 September each year).
c Your share
of the estimated costs of maintaining, repairing or improving the
block and estate. You must pay these estimated charges in
advance by 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October each year.
You must pay all of these charges even if we
don’t send you any bills. We will tell you in March each year
what your charges will be for the coming year.
If you do not pay your service charges when
they are due, you are breaking the contract that gives you your
rights to the property.
We will send you reminders before we take any
further action and give you the chance to explain why you are not
paying the bills. If you disagree with any part of your
charges, we will do our best to deal with the problem. If we
are satisfied that services you have been charged for have not been
provided to a reasonable standard, we will reduce the charges.
If we have to send you more than two reminders
without hearing from you we will charge you an additional
administration fee for each letter that we send. The total amount
of these fees that we collect will go towards reducing the overall
administration fee for all leaseholders. We do this so that
leaseholders who pay their service charges on time do not have to
pay for reminders sent to leaseholders who don’t pay.
If you are having financial difficulties, we
may allow you to pay in instalments and we can help you to apply
for Income Support or Pension Credit. When you apply for
Income Support or Pension Credit your claim should include your
service charges, the ground rent and insurance.
If we do not think that you have a good enough
reason for not paying your full service charges, we may take action
in the County Court to get the money from you and to take back the
lease. If the court agrees that you have broken the
conditions of your lease, you must pay the charges plus
interest. You must also pay our legal costs.
If you do not pay within the time allowed by
the court, we will apply to the court to repossess the flat and you
could be evicted. If you lose your home in this way the Council may
not be able to find you a new home because you will be considered
‘intentionally homeless’.
So you must let us know why you are not paying
your service charges so that any problems you are having can be
sorted out quickly.
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