foster carer prog - Council meetings - Lewisham Council

Findings
74. The management fees levied on service charge bills by the 9
sample ALMOs ranged from £140 to £238 per annum; and whilst some
ALMOs charged a fixed fee, others charged a percentage of the works
and/or services. It is likely that some of the variability might be a
result of different things being included in the management fee. For
example, we noted that currently Lewisham Homes did not include its
charge of £38 for anti-social behaviour services, £12 for resident
involvement £12 and £4 for customer services in its fixed rate
management charge. However, other organisations did include such
items within their management fees. This made making a strict
comparison between the organisations that took part in the exercise
difficult; although we feel that the wide range of service charge
management fees being levied was still notable.
75. The same wide range of charges was also apparent for major works
with charges ranging from 15% of works costs to in excess of 30%. In
this case, we understood that some of the variability might be due to
some ALMOs including certain costs as part of the works costs (such as
professional fees), whilst other ALMOs extracted out these costs and
charged them as part of the on-cost, which could be made up of
management fees and professional fees. Nevertheless, the wide range
of charges was still notable.
76. We felt that it was a shame that the only benchmarking information
available to us was so dated, so we look forward to more up to date
information being collected in the near future.
Survey and focus groups
77. The survey and focus groups both assessed leaseholder satisfaction
with the cost of repairs, maintenance and major works. Evidence from
the survey suggested that:
• The majority of respondents (regardless of housing provider) felt
that the service charges and major works bills they paid were not
fair
• The majority of Regenter B3 respondents were not satisfied with
the billing arrangements for service charges and major works
•
Just over half the Lewisham Homes respondents were not satisfied
with the billing arrangements for service charges and just over 40%
were unhappy with the billing process for major works.
40 The Council’s obligations to leaseholders