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Home ownership and leasehold

  • Contents insurance
  • Safety rules and emergency
  • DIY in your home
  • Repairs to your home
  • Paying your rent
  • Home ownership and leasehold
    • Leasehold publications and minutes
    • Major works – choice of payment methods
    • Annual service charge actual explained
  • Major works programme
Home My home Home ownership and leasehold

Your guide to

home ownership and leasehold

  • What is a leasehold?
  • The lease
  • Landlords responsibilities
  • Home owner’s responsibilities
  • The Council’s responsibilities
  • The JMB’s responsibilities
  • What leaseholders pay for

If you have bought a property in a shared block on a JMB estate, or if you have bought a house that receives services from the JMB and the council, then you will have bought your property under a legal arrangement known as leasehold. This means that you have a legal agreement – the lease – between yourselves and Southwark Council which sets out responsibilities on both sides. You are legally known as the leaseholder of the property and are legally obliged to pay for the shared services you receive through service charges.

This is the legal document that sets out the landlord’s & leaseholder’s responsibilities. Southwark Council is legally the landlord on JMB Estates. Leathermarket JMB is the managing agent for the estates.

Southwark have a number of different leases in operation and the terms can vary between them.

  • Maintain, repair, renew and improve the block and estate
  • Insure the property
  • Levy service charges – these must be reasonable.
  • Consult with leaseholders about repairs that will cost individual leaseholders more than £250 (unless repairs are an emergency)
  • Consult with leaseholders before letting long term qualifying contracts
  • Enforce the terms of the lease

As the leaseholder, you have a number of responsibilities. These are to:

  • Pay service charges
  • Maintain the property
  • Gain written consent from the landlord before undertaking structural alterations
  • Give the landlord’s operatives consent to inspect the property
  • Not cause a nuisance
  • Comply with houses in multiple occupation requirements if the property is wholly sub-let.

Southwark Council has a number of direct responsibilities. These are to:

  • Calculate and levy service charges
  • Deal with balance & payment enquiries
  • Arrange Insurance
  • Run District heating (on relevant estates)
  • Administer Estates electricity (from 1.4.09)
  • Apply ground rent
  • Monitor service standards for responsibilities that are delegated to the JMB
  • Resolve legal issues relating to the lease

Certain responsibilities are delegated from the landlord to the JMB in a Management Agreement. The JMB is called the “managing agent”.

Our constitution says that the JMB operates for the benefit of members (no distinction between leaseholders and tenants).

Currently 3 of our 10 elected directors are leaseholders. This reflects the balance between leaseholders and tenants on our estates.

Generally, leaseholders contribute to estates works paid for by the JMB and the council.

The one exception is improvement works under the Council’s Cleaner, Greener, Safer scheme which are funded directly by Southwark Council for the benefit of all residents of the area.

Some improvement projects are paid for from money paid by developers carrying out building work nearby to JMB estates. This is known as planning gain or section 106 money.

The legal position around whether leaseholders should pay for these is complex. However, the JMB have been advised not to charge leaseholders for work on two schemes we have recently undertaken with planning gain money.

Services Charges

more information

  • How are service charges calculated?
  • Why are service charges charges increasing?
  • Service charges – estimated and actual bills
  • Details of Service Charges
  • Major works
  • If you’re having trouble paying your service charge
  • If you’re not happy with service or charges

Homeowners are required to pay their fair share of the cost of managing and maintaining their estate and the services the JMB provides. Each year’s service charges are calcluated for the financial year, which runs from April to March. You should receive an estimate of the following year’s charges in March of each year.

Every autumn, the JMB and the Council’s Home Ownership Unit work out how much we actually spent providing services to your property and estate in the preceding financial year, and

then the Council’s Home Ownership Unit details of the charges. If the amount is higher than the estimate we sent you, you must pay the  difference within one month. If the amount is lower, then the balance will be credited to your account, immediately. We will also send you a statement of your account every quarter.

The calculation of most annual service charge headings are based on a ‘weighting’ method. This assumes that each property has four basic rooms – bathroom and toilet, kitchen, living room and hallway. We then add the number of bedrooms to come to a number of units for each property.

For example a one-bedroom property consists of five units, whilst a three bedroom property has seven ‘units’. Next, we total the number of units in the block – so a block with 5 two-bedroom and 5 three-bedroom properties would total 65 units – and divide this total into the cost of providing the services. This gives us the unit cost.

Finally, the unit cost is multiplied by the number of units for each individual property in order to reach the charge for that property. Consequently, the larger the property the higher the charge.

Homeowners are reqired to pay their fair share of the cost of managing and maintaining their estate and the services the JMB provides. In the past leaseholders were not charged the full cost of the services that they received. Over the past few years, the Council and the JMB have started to identify the costs of services more accurately, identifying costs. Although overall inflation is low, fuel, electricity, lifts and insurance costs increased significantly in 2007/8.

In 2007/08 the JMB stepped up its programme to improve the condition, appearance and up-keep of our estates. Leaseholders pay their share of this improvement work and so will have seen an increase in the repair and care and up-keep elements of leaseholders’ bills.

However, the total costs to leaseholders have been partly offset because between 2006/7 and 2007/8 JMB running costs reduced by £100,000. In particular the staffing costs have reduced by £100,000.

The council estimate what the service charge will be for each property before the start of the financial year. The council send out bills for these amounts and leaseholders should pay this amount within the year it is due.

Between six to twelve months after the end of that financial year the council look at the actual costs of the services that leaseholders recieved in that financial year and work out what the fair share that each leaseholder should pay. They then send out a new bill – the actual bill – which adjusts the estimated bill up or down.

The JMB has produced a breakdown of the Actual service charge bills for 2009-10 that were sent out out early in 2011, showing how the figures had changed on the previous year and how they compare to homes managed by Southwark Council

When major refurbishment works are planned for a particular block or property, there is a two stage process to notify leaseholders that they will be expected to pay the council for their share of the refurbishment. The costs to leaseholders for this work can run into tens of thousands of pounds.

The first stage is that councils send out a Notice of Intention, which gives an outline of the proposed works

When the work has been competitively tendered and the price is known, leaseholders receive a second notification called a Notice of Proposal.

Payment should coincide with works to the block leaseholders live in.

If you’re having problems paying the annual service charge or major works charge for your home you should contact Southwark Council’s Home Ownership Unit to discuss your situation.

If you are not happy with a service you are receiving from the JMB you should contact us so we can put it right.

If the problem goes on longer than is reasonable you should record a complaint in a letter or e-mail. JMB staff should answer/ acknowledge the complaint.

If you don’t think you should be paying for a service because you didn’t receive it or the standard was not good enough you may want to ask for a rebate of some of your service charge. As the actual service charge bills are sent out a year after the close of the financial year the service was received then rebate request may relate to what was going on almost two years ago.

The only way to decide whether a rebate is reasonable is to review written records from that time, so we can only consider rebates if we received a formal complain about the service at the time.

Insurance

information for homeowners (leaseholders)

Almost everyone who has bought their home on a JMB estate will be a leaseholder, paying a annual service charge for the services they receive via a legal agreement with Southwark Council (the lease).

Your service charge includes the cost of the standard Southwark Council buildings insurance.

This insurance covers damage caused to the structure of the building.

This insurance does not cover any loss or damage to the contents of your home – including furniture, clothes or items such as televisions, DVD players and music systems – whether caused by an accident in the home or caused by the action of one of your neighbours (for example a water leak from a neighbouring property).

The JMB strongly advises all home owners to have full contents insurance. This is available from as little as £2 a week. Read the Contents Insurance page of the website for more information.

The JMB itself has insurance which will only cover damage to your properly as a consequence of negligence by a JMB employee or contractor (for example a water leak caused by an incorrectly fitted pipe or valve). The JMB’s insurance does not cover damage caused by your neighbours (either leaseholders or tenants).

What does my buildings insurance cover?

Southwark Council has produced a policy document that explains what is covered (and what is not covered) by the buildings insurance paid for by your service charge. Download the policy document (pdf, 701kb) to read more about the details of the cover.

What do I do to make a claim on my buildings insurance?

Should you need to make a claim on your insurance policy, please contact Southwark Council’s Home Ownership Unit on 020 7525 7660 for advice.

Leathermarket JMB

Southwark's largest resident-managed housing organisation, running 1500 homes between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, Leathermarket JMB is the organisation which runs your estate, managed by the people who live in your area.

Residents are the reason we are here.

Contact details

Call us - 020 7450 8000

Email us
enquiries@leathermarketjmb.org.uk

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Copyright 2015 Tranmautritam's team | All Rights Reserved
  • JMB news
  • About the JMB
  • JMB Estate
    • Our homes
    • My estate
    • Live on a JMB Estate
  • My home
    • Contents insurance
    • DIY in your home
    • Safety rules and emergency
    • Repairs to your home
    • Paying your rent
    • Home ownership and leasehold
      • Major works – choice of payment methods
    • Leasehold publications and minutes
  • Get involved
    • Have your say/ Get involved
    • Tenant and Resident Associations (TRAs)
    • JMB Directors
  • Publications
    • JMB Management Agreement
    • JMB Business Plan
    • Not Right First Time Policy
    • Newsletters
    • Sub Group Meetings
  • Events
    • Leathermarket Seniors Project
  • Job Vacancies
  • Contact Us
Leathermarket JMB
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