Scrutiny 14-18

14 Lift 1 has repeatedly stopped on floor seven over the past months, cancelling the call button light but not opening the doors. It then either moves on or goes out of service. Each time this is reported to the caretaker who says it will be taken up with the lift company but there’s nothing else he can do. There has never been any feedback of what the fault has been or the remedial action taken - another example of the management of the building not professionally monitoring work done or reporting back.

15 One of the lifts has a faulty emergency call system. This has been repeatedly reported to the managing agent over the years but without any resolution or feedback.

16 The black granite/marble surrounding the ground floor lift doors has broken panels and lintel - none of which need be load bearing and could be readily restored - presumably the lintel stone was saved to enable this.

17 The previous fire on the 16th floor which totally gutted the D flat is evidence that there is negligible risk of fire spreading from one flat to another above, below or beside it. Fire risk assessments seem to be carried out by people who, whatever their qualifications or experience, seem unable to professionally determine true risk levels.

18 There appears to be a trend by MetProp to improve or gentrify the building at the lessees expense. It is suspected that most lessees wish to minimise costs and are content to only pay for essential maintenance. As long as things function reasonably, they do not need to be updated to later standards or to be made “as new”. Improvement or making new should be a head leaseholder responsibility in any case.

Scrutiny 8-13

8 The black landfill bin in the undercroft has been removed and not reinstated despite repeated requests. The consequence is an increase in chute blockages at service charge expense by rubbish that a normal household wheelie bin would take but that is too large for the chutes - thus depriving residents of facilities for which they pay under council tax.

9 The managing agent was requested to have the concrete inspection report separately on the end elevations and the East and West elevations. This was refused and repeated requests for evidence of spalling of the East and West facades has been ignored.

10 There is mention of compartmentation of the internal (demised) risers. It has been pointed out that these form a vertical compartment and thus do not need floor-by-floor compartmentation. The same situation applies to the stair wells, the rubbish chutes and the lift shaft. If compartmentation of the flat risers is required, it should follow floor-by-floor compartmentation of the stairwells, rubbish chute and lift shaft.

11 The managing agent has been repeatedly asked to ensure that contractor work resulting in service charge invoices is suitably inspected and signed off by a responsible employee or agent of the managing agent. The failure to ensure this results in shoddy work by incompetent contractors requiring remedial work at lessee cost ‘eg intumescent strips in communal fire doors.

12 The recent meeting with residents in Dreamland was cut short by half an hour - yet residents and lessees were still asking questions and continued to do so after the meeting was prematurely terminated.

13 The CCTV system was intended to be available (live feed) to residents and lessees over the internet (the service charge includes more than adequate phone costs to cover this) so that the car park could be monitored. Despite repeated requests, this has not been provided.

scrutiny 1-7

1 For many months (perhaps years) the “Fire Action Plan” displayed on all floors referred people with limiting mobility to seek a “Signed Place of Refuge”. There are no such signed places.

It was repeatedly pointed out to the managing agent that confusion and ambiguity in safety notices is dangerous. In the event of a visitor with limiting mobility hearing the alarm and reading the notice, they may well go in search of such a signed place - putting themselves in danger. it was also pointed out that correction merely required reprinting 20 sheets of A4 paper.

2 On the 7th floor, door 0079 fails to close properly because it catches on the intumescent fire strip of door 0078.The installation of the intumescent strips was not done professionally and was not sufficiently inspected by a MetProp representative to be signed off. Industry recommendation is that a 2-4mm gap exists between the strip and the adjacent enclosure. A professional installer would take into account which end of that range should be achieved depending on the temperature and moisture effect on the gap at the time of installation. Other communal area fire doors are similarly defective. This has been repeatedly pointed out to the managing agent.This was actually pointed out during a fire risk inspection to the assessor and managing agent and they both ignored the question.

3 The rear door opposite the caretaker’s office is signed as a fire exit. Visitors or residents without their fob who exit that way according to fire instructions would be unable to re-enter and would be trapped in a locked enclosure adjacent to the burning building. This has been repeatedly reported to the managing agent and ignored. Residents would even be unable to open the door by calling their flat door entry because it has only a door fob release and not a door entry call panel.

4 The Fire Action Plan requires those in the building to evacuate on hearing the fire alarm. The designated fire safety point is ‘somewhere’ in the station car park. There is no procedure that appears to exist and certainly never invoked to recall evacuees when KFRS say there is no ongoing danger. This has been repeatedly flagged to the managing agent who has ignored it, failed to develop any procedure and failed to implement such a procedure.There are frequent false alarms including those triggered by work on the system but not notified to residents. Each such alarm should result in evacuation - without any means of knowing it’s safe to return.

5 Why are the service charge accounts always years late and include excess costs that repeated First Tier Tribunals have deemed unreasonable or unreasonably incurred to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds?

6 MetProp retains a significant number of flats so that Right to Manage and Freehold transfer applications are severely inhibited and virtually impossible. Given that many of these flats are then rented out by MetProp but not leased, work done on these flats should not be charged to the service charge account as they are effectively owned by MetProp.  

7 MetProp signed a unilateral deed of undertaking (Section 106) as part of the Tesco planning application. This undertaking commits MetProp to pay the costs of replacing the windows of Arlington House and is in force as long as the application consent is extant. Neither Benzion Freshwater nor Thanet District Council planning will say that the consent is no longer enforceable - both have refused to answer requests on this matter (TDC in spite of being subject to both FoI and complaint processes).