Woman kicks out FirstPort following excessive service charges

Amber Needham is now on a mission to help others use their right to manage too.  Local Democracy Reporter Ollie Leader reports.

Transcript

00:00A Greenhide paralegal turned accidental crusader in the fight for fairer estate management.

00:09For much of her time at Unicorn Walk, Amber Needham faced rising service charges and delayed

00:15repairs.

00:16But when she struggled to sell her flat as a result, she decided to do something about

00:23it.

00:24Yeah, it's terrifying. Quite life changing as well because at the time I was looking

00:30to sort of move in with a partner and buy a house. It was holding me back in that regard

00:34in my personal life. Just struggling to afford to pay the bills. We have to pay our service

00:38charges half yearly. So when it's up at two and a half, three grand, that's a lot of money

00:42to fork out every six months.

00:44The right to manage gives people the ability to get their estate manager removed if more

00:51than 50% of residents agree. But having halved her annual service fees since switching to

00:58a different property manager, she's now helping others to do the same.

01:04So far, I'm trying to do some others, but my block, which is over there, and then one

01:09of the smaller blocks over there, their claim was admitted the other day, so they've now

01:13got the right to manage as well. And then also my mum's block, my mum's got a flat in

01:19a block in Rochester called Lion Court. And she was in the same situation, but actually

01:25it was a little bit easier because we didn't need to do a right to manage for that. So she

01:29was also with Firstport and her charges were just going up and up and up. I think, I think

01:35they went up about £800 within the space of a year and I was just looking at it like you're

01:39going to end up in the same situation that I was in essentially.

01:42It's there and in her own block that she teamed up with Stuart Grist, who set up his estate

01:49management company with the purpose of providing a fairer deal for residents.

01:55The managing agent, the fees seemed to go up every year, but the service was going down.

02:01So cleaning wasn't done regularly. We were really frustrated at the quality of the building

02:06maintenance and things like that. And after many years of moaning, I decided, do you know

02:11what, I think I can probably have a crack at doing this better myself. So many of the estates

02:16where we've taken over, we've reduced service charges. In fact, actually, I'd say every single

02:21estate we've taken on, we've reduced service charges between 15 and 50% in total.

02:28A spokesperson for Firstport says the service charges are used to cover day-to-day running

02:35costs of a development and that comparing charges isn't always straightforward. But the MPs for

02:42both estates say the wider system is broken.

02:47I think some of the problems we've got are very ingrained. I think these managing agents

02:51like Firstport operate within the legal framework that's set out at the moment and that often

02:57hugely disadvantages residents receiving those services. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they're

03:02being ripped off and they're being abused by some very poor practices.

03:09And that's why the new Labour government is committed to introducing legislation this year

03:14and doing a really proper consultation with residents to make sure we get it right to tackle

03:20some of these issues.

03:21Amber's fight is not over, with plans to start a company to help with right to manage up and

03:29down the country. And by the looks of it, she'll have her work cut out for her.

03:35Olly Leader in Green Eythe