I hope somebody can answer 2 questions I have about a mangement company set up in my estate. Forgive the long post but I need to put some background to this before I ask the questions.
I bought my house 5 years ago in Dublin 15. The house was in a new estate and the estate was made up of houses and apartments that were a mixture of private, affordable and social.
I was one of the first to move into the estate.I got my house through the affordable housing scheme (I have since bought the council out of their share)
To the right of my house is a council estate (that has been there years). Anyway this estate had been blocked off from out estate by 10 ft high railings. There was still a lot of building going in in my estate.
When signing for the house I also signed up to pay 2 years fees to the management company that was set up by the council for the estate.
Approx 1 year later A letter arrived from the council (not signed adn with no contact name) stating that after meetings and agreements with the residents from our estate and the other estate the railings blocking access would be coming down. I was never informed of any meeting and neither were any of our neighbours. Sure enough a few months later the railings came down and were replaced by 3 foot high railings with access for the other estate. Now even though we should have we didnt raise the issue with Fingal as a new shopping area had been built near our estate and we didnt think it was fair to have the residents of the other estate have to walk the long way around to get to the new shops.
Around the same time as the new railings were put up kids and teenagers from this older estate started pulling newly planted trees up, spraying graffitit all over, smashing some of the windows in the houses, urinating in gardens, smashing windows in the buses going by.. general anti social behaviour. We rang the management company to inform them about what was happening. They were very slow to deal with cleaning up the mess left by these people.. For instance one of the railings was removed by a stolen car crashing into it and wasnt replaced for 8 months.
Anyway more and more people got fed up with the management company slowness in dealing with cleaning up the estate 2 of the directors of the management company were council employees but you could never get in touch with them in either of their cappacities. You would ring and leave messages and they were never returned. It was a rediculous situation
Myself and a lot of other residents decided last year to stop paying.. Now I know this was probably not the best course of action but we were fed up with the scumbags littering our estate.. urinating in our gardens, crashing robbed cars into the railings and the management company taking forever to clean things up and not been contactable at all and all the while not 6 feet from my front door this other estate was getting its grass cut and litter cleaned by the council.. paid for by our taxes. We were not getting this because we are tied up in a management company.
Last year we had an AGM.. Not one resident at this meeting agreed with the proposed budget for the year or with a lot of the issues raised. There was a lot of questions asked that were not answered to our satisfaction.
Now there are 715 units in the estate. 110 of these are social housing .. The council get a block vote on these houses/apartments.. the tenants cant vote.. even though they pay 10 euro a week in management fees.
There was about 90 people at the meeting.. even though we all voted against proposals proposed the Management directors (the council employees) voted the proposals through cos they could use the block votes from the council tenants.
Anyway the problems in the estate are still unresolved and I havnt paid my mangement fees in about 10 months.. I have no problem paying them if our estate was a closed off one and was properly maintained (which it wasnt even when everbody paid their feeds) so my questions are
1. Is my contract to pay the management fees still binding even though the access to the other estate was created after I had signed up.. thinking that our estate was to be a private one with only access to the residents (thats why I presumed the managment company was been set up in the first place).
2. In relation to 1.. Do i have grounds to sue the council for creating this access after I had signed and bought my house.. I do not recall at any time been told that this access was been built.. not until I received the letter from the council informing me of this 1 year after I had moved in
Thanks everybody for your time
Gaz
I bought my house 5 years ago in Dublin 15. The house was in a new estate and the estate was made up of houses and apartments that were a mixture of private, affordable and social.
I was one of the first to move into the estate.I got my house through the affordable housing scheme (I have since bought the council out of their share)
To the right of my house is a council estate (that has been there years). Anyway this estate had been blocked off from out estate by 10 ft high railings. There was still a lot of building going in in my estate.
When signing for the house I also signed up to pay 2 years fees to the management company that was set up by the council for the estate.
Approx 1 year later A letter arrived from the council (not signed adn with no contact name) stating that after meetings and agreements with the residents from our estate and the other estate the railings blocking access would be coming down. I was never informed of any meeting and neither were any of our neighbours. Sure enough a few months later the railings came down and were replaced by 3 foot high railings with access for the other estate. Now even though we should have we didnt raise the issue with Fingal as a new shopping area had been built near our estate and we didnt think it was fair to have the residents of the other estate have to walk the long way around to get to the new shops.
Around the same time as the new railings were put up kids and teenagers from this older estate started pulling newly planted trees up, spraying graffitit all over, smashing some of the windows in the houses, urinating in gardens, smashing windows in the buses going by.. general anti social behaviour. We rang the management company to inform them about what was happening. They were very slow to deal with cleaning up the mess left by these people.. For instance one of the railings was removed by a stolen car crashing into it and wasnt replaced for 8 months.
Anyway more and more people got fed up with the management company slowness in dealing with cleaning up the estate 2 of the directors of the management company were council employees but you could never get in touch with them in either of their cappacities. You would ring and leave messages and they were never returned. It was a rediculous situation
Myself and a lot of other residents decided last year to stop paying.. Now I know this was probably not the best course of action but we were fed up with the scumbags littering our estate.. urinating in our gardens, crashing robbed cars into the railings and the management company taking forever to clean things up and not been contactable at all and all the while not 6 feet from my front door this other estate was getting its grass cut and litter cleaned by the council.. paid for by our taxes. We were not getting this because we are tied up in a management company.
Last year we had an AGM.. Not one resident at this meeting agreed with the proposed budget for the year or with a lot of the issues raised. There was a lot of questions asked that were not answered to our satisfaction.
Now there are 715 units in the estate. 110 of these are social housing .. The council get a block vote on these houses/apartments.. the tenants cant vote.. even though they pay 10 euro a week in management fees.
There was about 90 people at the meeting.. even though we all voted against proposals proposed the Management directors (the council employees) voted the proposals through cos they could use the block votes from the council tenants.
Anyway the problems in the estate are still unresolved and I havnt paid my mangement fees in about 10 months.. I have no problem paying them if our estate was a closed off one and was properly maintained (which it wasnt even when everbody paid their feeds) so my questions are
1. Is my contract to pay the management fees still binding even though the access to the other estate was created after I had signed up.. thinking that our estate was to be a private one with only access to the residents (thats why I presumed the managment company was been set up in the first place).
2. In relation to 1.. Do i have grounds to sue the council for creating this access after I had signed and bought my house.. I do not recall at any time been told that this access was been built.. not until I received the letter from the council informing me of this 1 year after I had moved in
Thanks everybody for your time
Gaz