• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Before Header

  • Home
  • What is LKP
  • Contact
Donate

Leasehold Knowledge Management Logo

Secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold reform

Mobile Menu

  • Home
  • What is LKP
  • Contact
  • Advice
  • News
    • APPG
    • ARMA
    • Bellway
    • Benjamin Mire
    • Brixton Hill Court
    • Canary Riverside
    • Charter Quay
    • Chelsea Bridge Wharf
    • Commonhold
    • Communities Select Committee
    • Conveyancing Association
    • Countrywide
    • DCLG
    • E&J Capital Partners
    • Exit fees
    • Fleecehold
    • FPRA
    • Gleeson Homes
    • Ground rent scandal
    • Grenfell cladding
    • Hanover
    • House managers flat
    • House of Lords
    • Informal lease extension
    • Insurance scams
    • IRPM
    • Jim Fitzpatrick MP
    • John Christodoulou
    • Justin Bates
    • Justin Madders MP
    • Law Commission
    • LEASE
    • Local authority leasehold
    • London Assembly
    • Louie Burns
    • Martin Paine
    • McCarthy and Stone
    • Moskovitz / Gurvits
    • Mulberry Mews
    • National Leasehold Campaign
    • Oakland Court
    • OFT / CMA
    • Park Homes
    • Persimmon
    • Philip Rainey QC
    • Plantation Wharf
    • Peverel
    • Prostitutes
    • Quadrangle House
    • Redrow
    • Retirement
    • RICS
    • Right To Manage Federation
    • Roger Southam
    • Sean Powell
    • RTM
    • SFO
    • Sinclair Gardens Investments
    • Sir Ed Davey
    • Sir Peter Bottomley
    • St George’s Wharf
    • Taylor Wimpey
    • Tchenguiz
    • West India Quay
    • William Waldorf Astor
    • Windrush Court
  • Parliament
  • Accreditation
Menu
  • Advice
  • News
      • APPG
      • ARMA
      • Bellway
      • Benjamin Mire
      • Brixton Hill Court
      • Canary Riverside
      • Charter Quay
      • Chelsea Bridge Wharf
      • Commonhold
      • Communities Select Committee
      • Conveyancing Association
      • Countrywide
      • DCLG
      • E&J Capital Partners
      • Exit fees
      • Fleecehold
      • FPRA
      • Gleeson Homes
      • Ground rent scandal
      • Grenfell cladding
      • Hanover
      • House managers flat
      • House of Lords
      • Informal lease extension
      • Insurance scams
      • IRPM
      • Jim Fitzpatrick MP
      • John Christodoulou
      • Justin Bates
      • Justin Madders MP
      • Law Commission
      • LEASE
      • Local authority leasehold
      • London Assembly
      • Louie Burns
      • Martin Paine
      • McCarthy and Stone
      • Moskovitz / Gurvits
      • Mulberry Mews
      • National Leasehold Campaign
      • Oakland Court
      • OFT / CMA
      • Park Homes
      • Persimmon
      • Philip Rainey QC
      • Plantation Wharf
      • Peverel
      • Prostitutes
      • Quadrangle House
      • Redrow
      • Retirement
      • RICS
      • Right To Manage Federation
      • Roger Southam
      • Sean Powell
      • RTM
      • SFO
      • Sinclair Gardens Investments
      • Sir Ed Davey
      • Sir Peter Bottomley
      • St George’s Wharf
      • Taylor Wimpey
      • Tchenguiz
      • West India Quay
      • William Waldorf Astor
      • Windrush Court
  • Parliament
  • Accreditation
You are here: Home / News / Lawyers fighting right to manage get their legal fees slashed from £28,117 to JUST £2,883!

Lawyers fighting right to manage get their legal fees slashed from £28,117 to JUST £2,883!

February 11, 2014 //  by Sebastian O'Kelly

(… and, yes, of course the freeholder is registered in a tax haven)

BatesHardwick2Two lawyers fighting a right to manage application at the fashionable Post Box Birmingham site have had their costs slashed 90 per cent by a tribunal.

Barrister Justin Bates (top), of Arden Chambers, and Roger Hardwick, of Brethertons, were asking for £28,117.95 in costs, but they came away with just £2,883.

That added up to £400 for Mr Bates, while Mr Hardwick had his hourly rate reduced from £250 an hour to £225.

The same two lawyers are giving a presentation in March at a “Property Management Summit” on “right to manage” which, given that Mr Bates represents freeholders in these cases, perhaps should add: “and how to thwart it”.

Sir Peter Bottomley named Mr Bates in Parliament in December, and expressed his frustration with lawyers playing the leasehold system.

The £28,117 legal bill concerned a right to manage application at the Post Box Birmingham, which includes 258 flats and two commercial units.

The right to manage application was withdrawn in November 2012.

The leaseholders were represented by Margarita Mossop, a solicitor who works with the Right To Manage Federation. The RTMF is handling the right to manage application at the site.

She argued “that the tribunal had not ‘dismissed’ the application, it had been withdrawn by the RTM company and consequently there was no liability to pay the landlord’s costs”.

 

Residents at the Post Box Birmingham have managed to avoid a helfy legal bill
Residents at the Post Box Birmingham have managed to avoid a hefty legal bill from their offshore freeholder

The tribunal noted that “RTM is essentially no fault and Parliament clearly intended Landlords not to be out of pocket as a consequence of the taking of advice on receipt of a claims notice.”

In this case, the freehold of the Post Box Birmingham was Guernsey-registered Post Box Ground Rents Limited, part of the Brooks Macdonald group. The chief executive of  Brooks Macdonald is Chris Macdonald and the chairman Chris Knight. The other directors are listed here

“Mr Bates said his client had provided full details of its costs, time schedules, copy invoices and disbursements to support its claim,” the tribunal noted. “It had been a complex case involving questions of law and fact with multiple buildings and several hundred flats as evidenced by the original Trial Bundle …”

But the tribunal was not having it.

The right to manage had been withdrawn, rather than failed and the legal bill was slashed.

Mrs Mossop pointed out that Mr Hardwick’s £250 hourly rate was “excessive for a grade B solicitor with five years’ experience working from an office in Banbury”.

The tribunal agreed – noting that he was “a reliable witness” – and cut the figure to £225.

Whether VAT should have been added was discussed – because the Post Box Ground Rents Limited is registered in a tax haven – but was allowed to “its UK-VAT registered suppliers”, meaning the two lawyers.

The “Property Management Summit” where Mr Bates and Mr Hardwick are speaking is organised by the property management’s journal News on the Block.

The cost of attending, which includes a comedy evening, is £245 (plus VAT).

The case reference for Post Box Birmingham is BIR/OOCN/LCP/2013/0001

Or read as jpgs here

PostBoxBirminghampp1-2

PostBoxBirminghampp3-4PostBoxBirminghampp5-6PostBoxBirminghampp7-8PostBoxBirminghampp9FINAL

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailPensioners lose leasehold right to manage application for the third time Barrister Justin Bates fails to block right to manage on the grounds that leaseholders’ company name did not include ‘RTM’ in the title Retirement site loses right to manage appeal after three years. Now what’s the cost? flatsRuling blasts Israel Moskovitz’s lawyers for ‘wasting tribunal time’ in legal warfare that is ‘part of a pattern’, as RTM gains control of £69,000 funds Default ThumbnailLeasehold Advisory Service: ‘Lawyers here won’t even speak to me, because I cannot afford their fees’

Category: Justin Bates, News, Sir Peter Bottomley, Tribunal triumphs ... and defeatsTag: Brethertons, Brooks Macdonald, Chris Knight, Chris Macdonald, Justin Bates

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @LKPleasehold
Previous Post: « Palgrave Gardens gives Peverel its marching orders
Next Post: FT quotes LKP’s leasehold figures in flooding report »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. simin Eftekhari

    February 11, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    “Sir Peter Bottomley named Mr Bates in Parliament in December, and expressed his frustration with lawyers playing the leasehold system.”.

    Great News. Vulnerable Leaseholders are invoiced for all these unreasonable and unfair legal costs, and are under immense pressure.
    Thank you for work of leasehold system’s campaigners.

  2. AM

    February 12, 2014 at 10:12 am

    I think the point worth making is not that the fees were slashed, but they had no business asking for the bulk of the fees in the first place!

Primary Sidebar

Above Footer

Advising leaseholders. Avoiding disasters.
Stopping forfeiture. Exposing abuses. Urging reform.

We depend on individuals for the majority of our funding.

Support Us and Donate

LKP Managing Agents

Become an LKP Managing Agent

Stay in Touch

To achieve victory in the leasehold game where you are playing against professionals and with rules that they know all too well - stay informed with the LKP newsletter.
Sign Up for Newsletter

Professional Directory

The following advertisements are from firms that seek business from leaseholders.
Click on the logos for company profiles.

Leasehold Law logo

Footer

About LKP

  • What is LKP
  • Privacy and data
  • LKP Site Map

Categories

  • News
  • Grenfell cladding
  • Commonhold
  • Law Commission
  • Fleecehold
  • Parliament
  • Press

Contact

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership
Open Data Institute
3rd Floor
65 Clifton Street
London EC2A 4JE

sok@leaseholdknowledge.com

martin.boyd@leaseholdknowledge.com

Copyright © 2021 Leasehold Knowledge Partnership | All rights reserved
Leasehold Knowledge Partnership Limited (company number: 08999652) is a company limited by guarantee that is a registered charity (number: 1162584) with the Charities Commission.
Website by Callia Web