Leasehold: Are we really that bad? was the promising title of the Winter Seminar of the Association of Retirement Housing Managers (ARHM) held in Westminster this afternoon.

But it quickly became clear that ARHM was not going to engage in a bout of self-criticism. Indeed, there was no sign from the organisation’s hierarchy that there was any need for criticism at all.

Leaseholders demanding right to manage, trouble-making internet sites (presumably this one), a few unfortunate LVT and Land Tribunal rulings where the leaseholders actually won, and some flimsy reports on leasehold by the likes of the London Assembly and CentreForum, were the only clouds on a seemingly  clear sky.

Baroness [Sally] Greengross, the president of ARHM and a former head of Age Concern, cheerfully related her unfortunate “barrack-room lawyer” remark in the Lords earlier this year. She had “got into a lot of difficulty” with that one, she told her sympathetic audience, who included Peverel Retirement’s Keith Edgar and Michelle Banks, the chief executive of the Association of Residential Managing Agents. Amid knowing smiles, Greengross referred again to service charge challenges by “the most effective later-life lawyers”. But she did not dwell on the grievances, which she clearly believes are relatively trivial.

Her views could be summarised as: retirement leasehold is working pretty well and six million older people would consider it were it not for the “stigma” of retirement living.

The collapsed capital values, the predominance of a single freeholder (Tchenguiz) and of a single managing agent (Peverel), the inter-company commissions, loaded charges, unfair exit and sub-letting fees and the rest … to all these well publicised and substantiated grievances, Baroness Greengross had no comment at all. This is in spite of the fact that she had attended, but made no comment, at the Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation meeting with MPs on October 30.

But Greengross was very eager to help the ARHM membership in the House of Lords, and urged members to get in touch as “I don’t like being an inactive president”. Retirement leaseholders can expect very little from this former chief executive of Age Concern.

A more pugnacious and entertaining defence of the status quo came from Jeff Platt, chief executive of the Institute of Residential Property Management, which is involved in training managing agents. However, he was speaking in a personal capacity.

He gave a withering dismissal of both the London Assembly and CentreForum reports on leasehold, which he thought were “politically motivated”.

He noted that right to manage was increasing in retirement leasehold, but was strongly critical of it being a solution in the vast majority of cases.

He listed at length the perils of right to manage: debts on the service charges, confusion of responsibility in complex sites with existing management companies, the perils of managing agents offering superficially attractive deals to take the business away from the existing managing agent. “Right to manage is only the solution in a small number of self-contained flats,” he declared.

Although Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation believes every leasehold block in the country should achieve right to manage and is campaigning to make the criteria easier, we would be happy to publish Platt’s extended views on the subject. RTM is the only means of breaking the freeholder and his chosen managing agent’s hold over you without having to prove fault. Few if any residents in retirement development had ambitions to run their own blocks. They were driven to do so to break free from people who were cheating them.

Related posts:

‘You are all barrack-room lawyers with too much time on your hands’ – says ARHM president Should Esther Rantzen be a speaker at today’s ARHM jamboree? ARHM president Baroness Greengross says ‘sorry’ to Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation supporter ARHM expels Retirement Security … Did it oppose role of Keith Edgar?