Set to close the danger flats as £ 1m ‘below drain’

The BBC may reveal the tenants ‘attempts to prevent two dangerous blocks of flats and taxpayers’ money from closing two dangerous blocks.

Kirkbi, Beach Rise and Willow Rise in Mercesis were due to closure on Monday – and all their residents become homeless – due to serious fire security problems.

Flat owners said they were through “years of hell” to repair, asbestos removal and other costs, while their properties fell.

Local MP Anelisi Midgale said he was a victim of a “broken lease system”, but the landlord of the buildings said the residents were responsible for their maintenance and management.

The former council blocks of the 160-Flat were renewed as “luxury living” apartments in 2007 and sold up to each £ 100,000.

The tenants stated that as fire safety issues were identified by fire service, it fell on them to pay to fix them.

The Nozley Council had to spend around £ 400,000 on the security patrol, which “ensured that the residents do not need to leave their homes”.

72 -year -old Dave Hemings told the BBC that when he went to the beach house, he “only thought how he would take my coffin in the lift”, as he expected to live there for the rest of his life.

He said: “It was fantastic when I went in. The weight of space, good view. But in seven years there are four management companies that I have gone here and obviously they do not use the money they wanted.

“The lift doesn’t work, it smells, the building went down, while my service fees have gone from £ 1,100 per year when I have now gone for more than £ 4,000, and I am evicting.”

In 2011, the original developer sold the “head lease” of the buildings to a firm run by a businessman Michael Balls, which has a portfolio of hundreds of freeholds and leaseholds around the UK registered in several firms located in many firms located in the British Virgin Islands.

The firms associated with their firms, or relatives or business colleagues were appointed to manage blocks by the management company of the residents.

42 -year -old flat owner Mike Jones said that when £ 330,000 was picked up to pay for fire doors and other fire safety works, thousands of pounds were added to the professional management fee.

However, he said, the work was for a poor standard and was not completed and the building deteriorated.

In 2019, the head leases for buildings were transferred from one of the offshore-approved companies of Sri Bulay, which were now owned by high-profile London-based multi-millionaire investors Robert and Vincent Tengiz, which reported about 250,000 freeholds at a time.

Sri Balls stopped doing anything with buildings in 2021, and the BBC has learned that setting up a fire alarm system paid with a £ 40,000 government grant for a delay of 10 months. It means that Nosel Council had to take steps to pay for a 24-hour security patrolling party at a cost of £ 380,000.

Mr. Jones said that he and fellow leaseholder Ellen Shaw joined the board of the management committee of residents in 2023 in 2023 in an attempt to bring new management agents and bring back things, but said that trying to fix the problems of buildings had become an impossible task.

He resigned in April, when he said, it became clear that the fire was not allowing any extra time to solve the fire security problems of the service building.

“While these companies are earning money from these buildings, they have become more and more unsafe,” Mr. Jones said, who paid £ 95,000 for their flat.

“There were an elderly, weak lease holder with health problems, who had to sleep in his car because the lifts did not work, and he could not get up from the stairs.

“He was still being chased for money and was begging me to help him go bankrupt due to stress, but we passed before helping.”

“We have been dragged through hell and contacted anyone and everyone for help, but it all falls on the deaf ears.”

Mr. Gubble told the BBC that he was “on leave” and did not respond to the recommendation requests.

Although Tchenguiz brothers firm Rockwell FC100 is a zamindar of buildings and hire lease holders, but it is not a lump sum of buildings.

They are owned as part of the freehold, which was still conducted by the Housing Association LIVV Housing until 2022, when it was sold to a company called TR Marketing.

Inactive, Salaford-based micro-company-not able to contact the BBC-paid £ 5,000.

LIVV Housing said that it sold the land after “formal assessment” and did this because its long-term strategy “did not include the plan of building or management of any more high-wide blocks, so the retention of the land was not necessary”.

68 -year -old Ellen Shaw bought his flat in 2007 for more than £ 66,000 fees in Willow Rise.

She said that she hoped that the rental income would give her more comfortable retirement after being widowed, but was now on antidepressants and suffered from rapid anxiety.

But with the closure of the building, he feared that his investment was now useless.

Ms. Shaw said that she had no idea what the sale of freehold is for her or other lease holders, who were among them, who used to pay millions of pounds for flats on the ground.

He said: “I have an entire gamal of emotions – anger, resentment and hatred over those systems and bodies that have allowed to develop this situation.

“But the most difficult spirit is helplessness. This whole thing has blurred my life.”

He said that the money of flat owners and taxpayers had “gone under the drain”, saying: “We have been completely drought for years.”

Mercyssed Fire and Rescue Service stated that it had no option to order the closure of buildings “in the absence of any appropriate scheme to overcome the lack of fire security”.

The fire service service has not specified what problems were being forced to close the buildings, and the original developer LPC Living told the BBC that it had received “all the necessary approval and certification”.

Speaking after this emergence, the flats will have to be abandoned after the most recent £ 3,000-day security patrolling of the Nosele Council, MP Midgale said that “historic owner and management companies have gone away from their responsibilities”, adding that they fail to maintain the broken fire safety work, fails to maintain the broken lifts, even to maintain a basic stand are”.

“Despite the best efforts to remove the best efforts of recent directors and a new management company, the failures that have been exposed are great,” he said.

He described the situation as a “failure of a broken leasehold system”.

The government has described the broad leasehold system as “feudal” in England and Wales, and it fell less than the dreams of the house owners.

But currently it is facing a High Court’s fight against its plan to completely eliminate the leasehold system, prominent freeholders argued that changes could be spent millions of pounds.

A spokesperson of the Rockwell FC100 reported that the BBC The Residents Management Company had “the only responsibility for collecting and spending the money of the management and service charges of the buildings”.

The spokesperson said the rockwell was investigating the FC100 “what has happened for the current situation”.

And he said: “The status of these buildings displays real risks and consequences, which will face the residents above and below the country if the government introduces reforms that forces professional freeholders to get out of the market and instead apply the responsibilities to take care of the buildings on lease holders, whether they do not want to care about these responsibilities or not.”

Leaseholders Mr. Hemings, Mr. Jones and Ms. Shaw said that changes that are prevented from the implementation of profitable professional management companies by the landlords may not come soon.

Ms. Shaw said: “We will fight the bitter end, although Auds are piled up against us.

“There is no such thing as a level playground for” ordinary working people “, and there is no justice until you are smelling the rich.”