foster carer prog - Council meetings - Lewisham Council

Findings
• during a falling market, the framework pricing structure may not be
competitive;
• the framework terms are broad and general in nature and an
organisation’s specific requirements will still require the preparation
of detailed specifications/contract documents.
70. However, whilst Lewisham Homes would look at the potential use
of such agreements, experience thus far has not identified any cases in
which their use appears preferable to direct contracting.
Management Fees and Charges
71. We also considered the management charges currently being levied
by Lewisham Homes and Regenter as we were aware that a number of
leaseholders were concerned about the level of fees being charged. We
noted that, in terms of service charge management fees, Lewisham
Homes had recently moved to charging a fixed sum of £49 for street
properties and £140 for flats; whilst Regenter charged either 28% of
the total service charge or a flat rate of £45, whichever was the greater.
We noted that Lewisham Homes had moved to charging a fixed fee last
year, once it had become apparent that there were a number of
leaseholders paying more than £200 a year in service charge
management fees, whilst some (non-street property) leaseholders were
paying significantly under £100 which was not covering costs.
Therefore two flat rates - for street properties and purpose built blocks
- were implemented, supported by leaseholders at a focus group and
the Leasehold Special Interest Group.
72. As far as major works were concerned, we noted that Lewisham
Homes charged a 10% management fee of the works cost, plus
professional fees of between 6% to 10% depending on the contract;
and Regenter charged around a 12% management fee of the works
cost, plus professional fees of around 26%. However these percentages
were subject to some variation depending on the extent of professional
input and other on-costs.
73. As part of our consideration of management fees we looked at the
results of a benchmarking exercise undertaken by the Lewisham Homes in
2007/2008 to try to put the fees being charged into context. However, at
the time the benchmarking exercise was carried out, the Regenter
contract had not started (and was therefore not included in the exercise)
and Lewisham Homes had not yet moved to charging a fixed sum for its
service charge management fees, so the results were of limited value.
However they did serve the purpose of revealing that the nine ALMOs
sampled at that time all levied different fees that varied significantly. This
suggested that a ‘standard fee’ could not be pinpointed.
The Council’s obligations to leaseholders
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