Excess utility management fees by commercial landlord?

[warp9]

Our landlord of 7 years has just decided to start charging for supplying us our gas and electricity bills, to the tune of £250 each per month, which is £6K annually.

We're in a shared building with one other tenant with gas and electric in the landlords name. He reads the meter, splits the bill accordingly and sends us an invoice. Other than there being no transparency with this i.e. I have no idea if he is artificially inflating the bills, I don't have an issue with the process.

However, last month without notice he decides to charge us a monthly management fee of £250 for each utility (£500 a month, £6k pa).

I don't have a problem with this in principle, but it does seem rather excessive, given that he's also charging the other tenant this also.

Do I have any recourse on this? Isn't there an industry guide on fair and reasonable?

Thanks

[anonymous-user]

What does your contract say? Unilaterally introducing charges for things seems a bit off, unless they could have been charging previously but chose not to.

[bad company]

I’d be checking the lease. Sounds excessive.

[Squiddly Diddly]

First thing, check your lease to see if your landlord can levy the charge.

If they can, then the next thing is whether or not it is reasonable. In my book, it is unreasonable. A tenth of ot maybe.

[warp9]

Thanks for the replies. Our lease does allow for the provision of a management fee:

managing agents employed by the Landlord for the carrying out and provision of the Services or, where managing agents are not employed, a management fee for the same

However there is no statement of what that should be or what is deemed 'fair and reasonable'.

Any thoughts on how to tackle this from here? I seem to remember there being an industry document for setting standards within the commercial leasing world but can't remember it's name or who produced it.

[Squiddly Diddly]

I think you need to look at the time it takes the landlord each month.

I can't see it taking more than a hour combined. Trying to charge £500 for that is just crazy.

[cheekymeerkat]

Speak to the solicitor who signed off your lease, IIRC management charges tens to be 10% of the bill, but he could be marking up the bill as well so you're paying twice.

I once rented a small unit on a trading estate and they did the same, however he only marked up the price per kWh with nothing else to pay , which was annoying because you couldn't shop around for electricity. They had a hut on the estate with a meter for each property inside, all 27 of them, weird.

He got in to a right tiz with me because I asked United utilities to install a water meter as you do when you move in to a property. He had something going on with the water, and I don't think it was legal because he did say afterwards that there was no bill for water and I made a stupid mistake. Only thing is, landlord never advised me when I got the keys, i even spent hours on the phone trying to register electricity and kept being told the property doesn't exist.