Responsibilities of the Residents Management Company

General

The Directors of the Emerald Square Residents Management Company ("ESRMC") are here to represent the interests of all the shareholders of the company. The directors have legal obligations, inter alia, to exercise care, skill and diligence and independent judgement in the performance of their duties.

Importantly the directors will manage the appointed managing agent, Mainstay at the time of writing, and ensure compliance with Health and Safety legislation and the Landlord and Tenant Act, where applicable. The guidance issued to the directors is set out in this link - ARMA Guidlines[62662].pdf

The Directors are all shareholders in the ESMRC and are unpaid. In the past a lot of work has fallen on just a few shoulders which creates an unfair burden. We are always on the lookout for additional help so if you have just a few spare hours a month please get in touch.

The current Directors are:-

Robert Prowse

Nigel Smith

Martin Bowen

Hossein Bayat

Nick Sketchley

Service Charges and Budgets

The Directors have obligations under the Trustee Act to protect service charge monies. Service charges are set to be able to ensure that the estate is properly maintained. The service charge is designed to cover recurring annual costs, such as the maintenance of the gardens, but also to create a fund to cover periodic maintenance such as lift maintenance.

Budgets are set for part of the estate including

1. The Estate (common parts for all)

2. Barnes House

3. Sheen House

4. Roebuck House

5. Underground Parking

6. Rainwater Harvesting

Mainstay are responsible for creating the budget. The Directors review and approve the budget. A constant and continuing challenge is the need to build funds for long term maintenance whilst ensuring that service charge increases are reasonable. The Directors will seek to ensure that residents have full visibility of the challenges faced.

Mainstay will circulate the budget and resultant service charges prior to the financial year in question.

Consultation

Within a particular year Mainstay and the Directors are given discretion on minor individual spends.

Under s20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act any expenditure of qualifying works which would involve additional cost of £250 or more for any single contributing leaseholder or any long term agreement which would involve additional cost of £100 or more for any single contributing leaseholder in an accounting period, leaseholders must be consulted.

In the event that consultation is required, the consultation process and the issues of consultation notices will be managed by the managing agent. While the website may refer to a proposed consultation exercise that is so we bring the widest possible attention to the exercise and is not part of it.

Mainstay, the Directors and the website

Mainstay have been appointed as managing agents by the Directors to deliver annual and long term maintenance of the estate properties. All issues should be reported to Mainstay in the first place. Mainstay's contact details are noted on the home page. It is key that this process continues. and that the web site doesn't become clogged with complaints. Complaints logged here will not be logged or taken up by Mainstay.

Each month the Directors review logs of complaints registered with Mainstay by residents and their proposed resolution by Mainstay. Outstanding issues and plans by Mainstay to rectify are reviewed and agreed. Substantive outstanding issues will be noted and recorded on this site.

This is an example of the issues log and action plan we review on a monthly basis. It is reviewed with Mainstay so that an action plan is created by Mainstay for each issue with action plans revisited until the issue is satisfactorily dealt with and closed.

Directors will typically engage with Mainstay on individual issues and progress between meetings particularly where new contracts, such as landscaping, are proposed and need to be reviewed.

This log example happens to be issues which have been dealt with.

We also have to review and agree the Long Term Maintenance Plan which exists for each part of estate. This is an example of the LTMP for one part of the estate. The purpose of the LMTP is to allow us to build a sinking fund for future costs which sit outside the annual cycle and smooth the level of service charge over the long term.