The Village Association were delighted to see such a strong turnout for the Residents meeting held last night (24th April) at The Fleeting Brook. The objective of the meeting was to update all interested residents and members (and any other interested parties) on the situation regarding the playground and how that has expanded to include the future possible uses on the other public assets controlled by CBCT such as the Arc and Rifle Ranges. In attendance were residents and business owners from within The Village and representatives from Tandridge District Council, the Parish Council and Linden Homes. The opening statement and full background leading up to this situation was presented by Paul Pozzoni. It reads as follows....
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Meeting 24th April 2017 – Introduction
Good evening. We have called this meeting to allow members and residents to question your VA directors face to face about the situation surrounding the playground and more generally about CBCT. I’m sure people would like to raise other matters to do with the estate too we’ll deal with the main issue for tonight first and take other questions later.
I want to spend a few minutes setting out the facts as to what the VA is, who we are, and why we are here tonight to help members to understand the position regarding the VA and CBCT and then we can open to discussion out to questions from the floor.
What is the VA?
1. It’s a management company for the estate – administering the estate services and charges and also the commercial relationships that the VA is contracted to for the benefit of its members. We see as part of its role the maintenance and enhancement of our home environment and protecting the investment we have all made in our homes.
2. Owned by members – property owners – controlled by Linden until last year when it was passed to resident management and we had an EGM on 19th April2016 and the first resident directors were appointed and the first members AGM was held in October last year. The directors are aware that a large number of homes are rented out, both privately and as social housing – and your directors wish to consider the views of all residents not just members, which is why we have conducted open meetings.
3. Managed by directors representing all members – including the social housing providers who have a right to appoint a director. It’s worth pointing out that the social housing residents have a lower subsidised service charge not linked to the actual costs incurred, unlike the members who carry the greatest proportion of the service charges.
4. VA is in contractual relationships with CBCT via the RCD where (a) we collect money from residents to pay CBCT for carrying out its maintenance obligations (Clause 1.1.8 RCD) (b) CBCT undertake via their leases to repair and maintain the various land and buildings they were given and to limit their uses. Important to note at this stage that while these leases do permit CBCT to acquire the various freeholds (providing they are materially complying with their obligations) those protections for residents documented in the leases will continue to run with the freehold titles so ensuring that CBCT remain obliged to all the residents to maintain the assets and the restricted uses. I will come back to this in a moment.
Dispute – Mediation 2015-2016
There’s been an on-going dispute over the playground between the VA and CBCT since spring 2015 (when the VA was still under Linden director management). A petition was organised by a local resident, Caroline Warner, urging action to repair the playground; this petition gathered several hundred signatures, including that of the Chief Executive of CBCT Dick Moran.
This was a simple issue of children’s playground needing CBCT to repair and maintain it for which they are paid by residents to do.
The petition acted as a catalyst to bring matters to a head and the Linden directors at that time (with the support of a residents’ steering committee they had set up) started to withhold the maintenance payments to CBCT, running at a little over £28,000 pa.
The response from CBCT, rather than address the playground problem, was to sue the VA for the money. Their action culminated in mediation in May 2016, exactly a year ago next week. The key outcome was that CBCT agreed to transfer the playground to the council and that the withheld maintenance money a little over £28,000 was to go with the playground to pay for the necessary refurbishment to be arranged by the council. Other issues were discussed and agreed at the mediation, included repairs to the dilapidated Pavilion, CBCT treating Japanese Knotweed on their land, the transfer of the freeholds (even though they were in breach of the various covenants in their leases) and the VA agreed to resume maintenance payments.
The parties to that mediation were the VA, CBCT, Linden Homes, and Tandridge Council. The outcome regarding the playground was fully supported by the PC where by now Caroline Warner was elected a member and the PC had also agreed to add £10,000 of their own funds towards the costs of playground refurbishment.
The VA appointed a firm of solicitors to deal with the documentation for the CBCT “playground money” to be released from us to the council, but also importantly to represent the VA in connection with the freehold transfers from Linden to CBCT to ensure that the protections set out in the original agreements were properly secured for the future of the estate and our home environment.
Returning to the point about CBCT’s repairing liabilities, the leases are between Linden and CBCT and The Village Association is a party to them to protect the members and residents’ position. Those leases state that the freehold titles are to continue the restrictions on the uses of the various properties to the existing community uses and continuing to oblige CBCT to repair and maintain them, in that way ensuring the obligations of CBCT remain in place and protecting VA members and residents in regard to future changes of use, and redevelopment.
To achieve this, the VA solicitor had to work with Linden’s and CBCT’s solicitors, with input from the Council’s solicitor. The matter progressed through draft documentation on the leased properties, The Arc building, The Green and Pavilion, The Rifle Ranges and the Playing Fields as well as the playground documentation to protect the VA once it had passed the withheld £28,000 to the council. It’s worth stating that the Naafi building was excluded as there is a Receiver Appointed in respect of unpaid debts on that building.
After the mediation, progress was very slow and we offered several dates for a meeting with CBCT over the summer and autumn of last year none of which seemed convenient. Eventually we asked Tandridge to convene a meeting which took place on 10th November last year when the CBCT chairman confirmed they were adhering to the mediation settlement exactly as I have outlined to you this evening. This was in front of the TDC Chief Executive Louise Round, , the Council solicitor, Linden Homes, and the 2 Parish Councillors Chris Botten and Caroline Warner.
More legal work was done and in early December the VA supplied their part of the documents, signed by the VA to the Council’s solicitor. There was a further solicitors meeting called on 22nd December in London, at which their solicitor informed the meeting that CBCT would no longer proceed to transfer the playground without simultaneously being given all the freeholds in the other public assets and additionally they now required that the members and residents’ protections set out in the documents were watered down. This was a wholly new condition and a complete departure from the agreement at the mediation.
CBCT now want some of the repairing obligations permanently relaxed and to have greater freedom to change the use of buildings and land, particularly the Arc and the Rifle Ranges which the solicitor said CBCT were looking to sell to generate revenue (presumably from development?). At that meeting the CBCT solicitor confirmed that they would not be transferring the playground without an agreement to these new conditions. In reporting to us our solicitor has stated “it is clear to me that the playground is being used as a bargaining chip for securing agreement to the amendments that are being requested on the other transfers”.
These new changes were simply not acceptable to us as we believe that relaxing the protections given to members and residents by the wording of the original agreements between Linden, CBCT and the VA when the leases were granted, cannot be in the members or residents’ best interests.
We continue to act in your best interests and have obviously incurred significant legal costs based on the undertakings given and the promises made by CBCT in May, and repeated in November last year. Those promises and undertakings were made to the VA, to the Parish and District Councils and to Linden Homes.
At the point of the new demands from CBCT on 22nd December, we immediately suspended the solicitors’ instructions so that no more members’ money was spent now that CBCT had changed the goalposts. Up to then the VA has incurred fees amounting to approximately £12,000 on the playground and on the other freehold transfers. To put that in context it is less than £30 per dwelling and has been spent in order to protect the members and residents’ home environment.
We offered CBCT several dates and times in January and February to meet to discuss this impasse, to which we had no response. In the light of this complete change from CBCT, the VA has deferred making any 2017 maintenance payment as permitted by clause 1.1.8 of the RCD. The fact remains that the only time CBCT have entered a room with your VA is at the mediation and when called to do so by the Chief Executive of Tandridge Council.
Finally I should tell you that the Parish Council asked the VA and CBCT to attend 2 meetings to brief them on progress in respect of the playground late last year and early this year; we attended both meetings and on both occasions CBCT declined the invitation, as they have done again tonight.
We have called this meeting to allow members and residents to ask us questions about this situation, so I now invite any questions.
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Jon Forde also presented the VA outline plans to reduce the parking problems within the Village. This was well received by the attendees. More details of the Village parking plan will be made available in the near future. The VA thanks the Fleeting Brook for hosting and TDC, the PC and Linden Homes for their contribution and proactive involvement in these on-going discussions.