Apartment owners' fury at 'being told to cough up £2.2m for backlog of work' to rundown properties

Apartment owners say they have been told they can expect to foot a £2.2million bill for a backlog of maintenance and repair work to their rundown properties. The leaseholders of the 144 flats on the Canterbury Gardens estate in Eccles pay £186 a month in service charge but claim the property management company Onward Homes has failed to invest their money in routine fixes for years.

They complain of unpainted outer walls, neglected window sills, entrance ways and front doors which have mismatched letterboxes. Canopies, window boxes and fencing are left with flaking paint, they say, and they claim trees in the back gardens are being ‘mismanaged’, leading to subsidence in nearby flats.

The residents of Knights Court, Squires Court and Reeves Court have been issued with Section 20 notices which stipulate leaseholders must be consulted over the work. A cost analysis issued to the leaseholders amounts to £2.2m of work needed to bring the properties up to scratch, say the residents.

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Many of the flats at Canterbury Gardens are occupied by tenants, while others are lease owners. Jacqui Theaker, 60, and her partner Kevin Armes, 47, are among 16 households from the estate who met with the Local Democracy Reporting Service to air their grievances.

“Onward appears to have free reign to dismiss us and treat us as a money tree, while they decide on shoddy maintenance and repair standards, delayed responses, break promises and show no appetite to run the scheme in an efficient cost-effective manner,” she said. She also claims Onward was ‘picking and choosing’ if and when it responds to official complaints.

“Delays [in maintenance work] has cost us, as we are now