Brady Solicitors recently helped a managing agent to recover unpaid service charges from 72 flats owned by a housing association, with all costs covered.
Within a large development, it is safe to say that the odd late service charge payment, although not ideal, doesn’t have a huge impact on the cash flow of the block. However, in this instance, the managing agent of an 80 unit development had not received service charge payments for 72 of the properties. These were all owned by a housing association, and the arrears came to just under £100,000.
Cash flow
It doesn’t take an expert to realise that this created a significant cash flow problem for the managing agent to resolve, and one which was beginning to impact on improvements and maintenance work.
We had twice previously helped the managing agent to recover arrears before the claim stage, and so the managing agent turned again to Bradys to recover the service charge payments from the notoriously slow paying housing association.
Direct negotiations and a swift recovery
Through negotiating directly with the housing association, we were able to recover the full amount before getting to claim within a swift time-frame, especially considering the number of units involved and the substantial amount of arrears. The recovered amount not only covered the service charge payments, but also the client’s and our administration costs, leaving the client with nothing to pay.
During the discussions between the housing association and Brady Solicitor’s expert team, the housing association was also made aware of the impact of late payment, not only on the cash flow, but also on their tenants, as the lack of payment was beginning to make maintenance works unaffordable. Through these open discussions, we were seeking to stop this from being a reoccurring issue for the managing agent to deal with.
