Is it a legal requirement to pay a service charge?

All membership levels get access to our national database of quality controlled contractors

Contractors across the UK are searchable by postcode and contractor type (gardeners, plumbers, electricians, general builders etc.)

Quality control is administered as every time a BlockCare 300 member instructs us to pay a bill the contractors performance is recorded.

Contractors need to get a "customer satisfaction form" signed by a person on site else in the event of a dispute we will act on your instructions not to pay the bill.

Contractors on our database are charged a nominal administration fee to cover the checking of public liability/contractors insurance, references and the management of customer service.

All membership levels also get access to our repairs liability matrix this will give you an inside the industry view of who should be liable for what.

Block Care members use the Pay Block Bills area to instruct us to pay their bills which we then pay by bank transfer, and, if so instructed can debit to an owner (if the problem was their responsibility).

All members get company secretarial support to ensure that they never miss the critical filing dates for filing both the Confirmation Statement and the Statutory Accounts.

To enable us to act and protect you from fines, we will be appointed as a Shadow Director with the following limited powers to:

1. We will pay any Companies House fines should we be at fault. This excludes share transfers when a property is sold;
2. sign and submit the accounts to Companies House;
3. sign and submit the Confirmation Statement to verify the shareholder or members register.

*Excludes filing responsibilities prior to our appointment or for any part year if we are instructed during a service charge year.

All Blockcare100 members can access the forms they need online to prepare & File Accounts, Confirmation Statements and pass various Resolutions & More! You can use the 'email reminders tool' so you don't forget.

We have packaged the information the industry relies to make decisions...

1. All BlockCare members are just a click away from all key property legistlation since 1998.
2. The pest control, environmental health & planning departments of every Council in England.
3. Statistical data such as interest rates, retail prices index, house prices in your street.
4. Research data such as tools to compare Utility prices, Environmental reports, Listed building & Heritage information
5. Professional bodies such as ARMA, RICS, RIBA, SPAB

Relax knowing that we are regulated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and will reconcile your bank account for you.

• Your service charge monies will be:
• held in a bank account which is a designated client account.
• reconciled at least every 6 weeks.

The objective of bank reconciliation is to ensure the manual/computerised cashbook ledger upon which decisions will be made, is accurate (because the cashbook ledger which records payments and receipts matches the physical bank account).

1. receipts which bounced, (i.e. cheques returned by the bank, direct debits that failed collection due to insufficient funds).
2. direct receipts, (e.g., bank interest).
3. failed payments, (e.g., a cheque older than 6 months so cannot be cashed).

A cashbook is a ledger which shows the financial transactions being made into and out of an account.

Without a robust bank reconciliation process the integrity of credit control or arrears action is undermined.

Every company, including dormant and non trading companies, must file a confirmation statement. It confirms the information to Companies House hold about the company is up to date.

A confirmation statement must be filed at least once a year - or more often if there has been a significant change.

With BlockCare 300 we take care of this for you and debit the Companies House filing fee, currently £15, to the service charge bank account.

All Blockcare300 members get company secretarial support to ensure that they never miss the critical filing dates for filing both the Confirmation Statement and the Statutory Accounts, and, if we mess up we will pay any Companies House fines*.

To enable us to act and protect you from fines, we will be appointed as a Shadow Director with the following limited powers to:

1. execute share transfers when a property is sold;
2. sign and submit the accounts to Companies House;
3. sign and submit the Confirmation Statement to verify the shareholder or members register.

*Excludes filing responsibilities prior to our appointment or for any part year if we are instructed during a service charge year.

All Blockcare100 members can access the forms they need online to prepare & File Accounts, Confirmation Statements and pass various Resolutions & More! You can use the 'email reminders tool' so you don't forget.

Blockcare300 members can pay their service charge by monthly direct debit, and, we will review payments when required, for example when:.

1. there is a new budget, or
2. a year end balancing charge has been split

Blockcare300 members can update their ownership registers on-line at any time. This triggers RingleyLaw (our Solicitors) to review if there has been a notifiable event such as a change of owner or a sub-letting so they confirm the update.

Depending whether the property has been sold, or simply sub-let we will provide guidance on the selling or renting process.

Ringley Law will also deal with buyer's and seller's Solicitors and answer the preliminary enquiries to facilitate a sale, as well as dealing with share or membership transfers and updating both the ownership and shareholders or members registers also.

All Blockcare300 members get Company Secretarial support to:

1. be your appointed Company Secretary
2. become your registered office
3. keep abreast of the role and legal changes
4. maintain the Directors register
5. maintain the Members or Shareholders register
6. prepare and file the Annual Confirmation Statement
7. prepare and execute share certificate transfers
8. execute Licences to Assign (if the lease requires one when selling a flat)
9. execute the Purchasers' Deed of Covenant (if the lease requires one when selling a flat)
10. execute Compliance Certificates (if required by HM Land Registry to register a change in title)
11. Receipt Notices of Transfer.
12. Execute Licences to Alter (when so instructed by the Client)
13. File the statutory accounts with Companies House **

1. execute share transfers when a property is sold;
2. sign and submit the accounts to Companies House;
3. sign and submit the Confirmation Statement to verify the shareholder or members register.

What remains your responsibility as Client is to:

For Blockcare300 members we deal with Solicitors enquiries when a property sells.

Ringley Law offer 2 service levels:

1. A complete preliminary enquiries service
2. Support on a question by question basis as required

Or if you want to do it yourself, many of the documents you need can be easily stored in the Document Upload Centre

Blockcare300 members get FREE banking*. Your own Ringley administered Client account (holding only funds for your site).

You DO NOT GET CHARGED FOR:

1. your own bank account
2. bank payments
3. direct debit collections
4. paying in receipts via a bank's postal or counter service

...ALSO, there are no monthly or quarterly account management charges.

...AND, members get interest on credit balances.

As well as:

1. your own bank account (just for their block/estate),
2. instant access to funds, and
3. your funds are protected by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' Clients Money Protection Scheme (RICS)

All Blockcare300 members receive the bank interest on any credit balance held.

Your funds will be held in trust in accordance with Section 42 of the 1987 Landlord & Tenant Act and the bank shall have no right of set off. Interest receivable on your discrete Client account is payable at a rate that reflects all funds held by Ringley and will be credited to your fund; no interest is payable for the 3 days that money passes through the DD, credit card, cheque clearing or internet banking transit account.

The bank that holds your funds does so in a discrete client account for the premises within which funds are held in trust in accordance with Section 42 of the 1987 Landlord & Tenant Act and the bank has no right of set off.

Blockcare300 members do not need a separate accountant to prepare their service charge accounts.

The 1985 Landord and Tenant Act requires that service charge accounts are prepared and served on those liable to contribute. The fine for not doing so is £2,500. To be compliant the accounts must contain the following:

1. a schedule of debtors confirming each owners' arrears (if any) as at the year end date
2. a breakdown of expenses - to enable a comparison against the budget
3. the surplus or deficit
4. a schedule showing which expenses have been apportioned to which owner

Service Charge Accounts do not need to be filed with Companies House, but the statutory accounts DO!

Service charge accounts must reflect the provisions of any lease or transfer document and need to be correctly prepared to support any arrears action through the Courts or Tribunal service.

We bring all members access to our buying power through Towergate insurance. By joining our block policy, Towergate will give you rates that you may not be able to achieve as a buyer of one insurance policy. This because we procure and insure thousands of customers. Towergate offer policies to cover all your insurance needs including: Buildings Insurance, Diretors and Officers insurance, Public Liability insurance and Engineering Inspection insurance (for lifts etc..)

No Win No Fee Litigation - Arrears Collection

If you demand it wrong, then you cannot collect, so your demands need to:

• include the prescribed notes
• state the service address of landlord
• reflect the correct demand dates
• be budgeted to the correct year end....
• reflect charges that fall within the 18 month rule
• be reflected in a correctly prepared set of service charge accounts

What members get is assurance that the service charge demands will stand up in a Court or Tribunal as we will demand the money correctly and prepare and present the service charge accounts to all owners. If necessary we will serve a Section 20B Notice to ensure that you are not prevented from collecting a deficit (should the accounts be late).*

• You will still need to ensure that you adhere to statutory consultation procedures for any big works (any spend the liability for an owner exceeds £250) - or can instruct Ringley Law to run the Section 20 Consultation process for you.

For members we will send out:

• the 1st demand (by post and email)
• polite reminder (by email)
• final notice (by email)
• our financial hardship policy (by email)
• pre-action letter to correspondence address
• pre-action letter to the property

All BlockCare members get protection as Ringley Law will litigate any service charge and ground rent arrears on a no-win, no-fee basis.**

To be eligible

1. The debt must have accrued after you became a member.
2. Your annual subscription fee must be paid up to date.
3. The service charge and/or ground rent must have been demanded in accordance with the lease.

**Arrears accrued prior to becoming a member, we can still collect these but this will be subject to a chargeable evidencial review to advise you if there any procedural flaws and weigh up the merits of your case. To do so you will need to provide us with:

1. A copy of the lease
2. A copy of the service charge budget(s) for the period in which the debt accrued
3. Audit trail of payments being received into a trust or client account
Ledgers for the property with arrears
4. payment to cover the court fee
   
   

*Our responsibility for serving Section 20B Notices only applies to each full service charge year that we are appointed.

What if the case needs to go to Court or Tribunal

The no-win no-fee litigation service includes:

1. all casework (advocacy is an extra but don't worry, less than 1% of cases proceed to hearing)
2. arguments on reasonableness and recoverability

If you are unsure about whether you are demanding service charges in accordance with the lease, you should choose so we manage this risk not you.

You cant really put a price on over 100+ factsheets written by our Surveyors, Valuers, Building Engineers and Property Managers (written originally for our staff and free inside knowledge to you). Learn how we make decisions, know what action to take next.

Here's the 8 categories available:

Cracks in Exterior Brickwork - "Tapered Cracks: Cracks which are thicker at one end tapering to a thinner crack at the other (often tapering to a hair line crack). Tapered cracks can indicate rotational settlement e.g. extension building is pulling away from main building leaving a gap..."

Concrete Problems in Buildings - "Why are buildings built before 1970 more at risk? All concrete will carbonate to a greater or lesser extent, but the degree of risk depends on how deep the steel is sunk into the concrete and the extent of the protection it has. The level of cover over reinforcing grids or rods, that is cover by way of concrete, should be 50mm minimum and this is now stipulated in building regulations. However, in post war buildings only 1 inch (25mm) was stipulated and therefore carbonation is more likely to be a problem in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s buildings..."

For Credit control is included. We will save you from suffering the embarrasement of needing to chase your neighbour for their arrears. Stages 1 to 3 of debtchase are included in the subscription fee, thereafter, legal action is rechargeable to the debtor.

members can relax whilst we collect what the budgeted service charge.

For members credit control includes us sending out:

• the 1st demand (by post and email)
• polite reminder (by email)
• final notice (by email)
• our financial hardship policy (by email)
• pre-action letter to correspondence address
• pre-action letter to the property

Our processes are compliant with the Civil Procedure Rules pre-action protocol and includes the 30 waiting period prior to which Court action can commence.

Thereafter the debt collection routes are as detailed on the flowcharts below:

All BlockCare members get protection as Ringley Law will litigate any service charge and ground rent arrears on a no-win, no-fee basis.**

To be eligible

1. The debt must have accrued after you became a member.
2. Your annual subscription fee must be paid up to date.

Credit Control Notes

Note 1 : BlockCare 300 is not suitable where the lease requires retrospective billing.

Note 2 : If service charge is not properly demanded - it may not be recoverable.

Note 3 : If an expense is not presented to an owner within 18 months of it being incurred recovery of it is barred by law (save for where a Section 20B Notice is served). For BlockCare 300 Clients we will serve a Section 20B Notice (if required) for any full service charge year in which we are appointed.

As a Blockcare300 member Ringley Law can help you resolve defective lease issues and get you manageable.

Perhaps your lease

1. only lets you collect service charges after you have spent the money, or
2. does not mention something that you need to collect money for e.g., the lift, or
3. is silent on the dates to collect the service charges, or
4. does not allow you to collect a reserve fund, or
5. caps the service charge collectable at an outdated amount (too low), or
6. omits to say who repairs the windows, or
7. only makes expenditure recoverable if certified by a surveyor/accountant

Perhaps it worked well until one owner decides not to pay and now you need to get a robust mechanism that works (after all a Court will only help you collect the arrears if you have done exactly what the lease says.

Using Section 37 of the 1987 Landlord and Tenant Act, so long as:

1. 100% of owners consent to the proposed change, or
2. 75% consent and not more than 10% oppose, (for blocks of 8+ flats), or
3. all but 1 consent (for blocks of less than 8 flats)

then Ringley Law can resolve the situation for you through the Tribunal. The decision can be registered against the title to be binding on future owners too.

Sign up for BlockCare 100

Blockcare300 members can make payments to contractors and set up recurring payments for things like electricity, insurance premiums, cleaner, gardener etc.... It works a bit like online banking. You key who you want to pay, you can UPLOAD the invoice for safe storage, and then we make the payment for you.

In short there are two authorisation scenarios:

1. casting chairman - single person authorisation
2. any 2 Directors - dual authorisation

For single person authorisation the lead person presses [SEND] to send the budget or payment request to us for payment, for dual person authorisation, person 1 emails the request to person 2 who then sends the request to us to action.

So you choose the contractors you want and we will pay them, reconcile the bank account and produce the year end service charge accounts.

Critical Date Email Reminders ×

All BlockCare members can set up email reminders.

For example

• set the budget reminder, or
• renew the insurance, or
• call the Annual General Meeting

Blockcare300 members can relax as even IF you forget to log on and enter the service charge budget you want us to collect - we will simply apply a 10% increase to keep the block running, until you do