To define a service charge consultation rule

Leaseholders have the right to be consulted over charges for running or maintaining the building in which they reside, specifically if they are asked to pay more than £250 for planned work, or £100 annually for work and services lasting more than 12 months. Referred to as the Section 20 Consultation, this legal requirement serves to protect leaseholders from paying unnecessarily large sums for work carried out to their building. Typically, the consultation process is broken down into three distinct stages:

• Stage 1 – The Notice of Intention. A notice must be served, setting out the proposed works and why they are required, including an invitation for leaseholders to comment on the proposals and nominate potential contractors.
• Stage 2 - The Statement of Estimates. Once estimates for the planned works have been obtained, a further notice must be served to all leaseholders detailing the likely costs and how to inspect them; again, a formal invitation for feedback must be included in the documentation provided.
• Stage 3 - The Notice of Reasons. Once the contract is awarded, the landlord is required to issue a notice to leaseholders detailing any decision to opt against the cheapest estimate, or to select a contractor without nomination approval.

Civica Cx Housing supports the ability to alert end users when raising repair work orders against assets that could potentially invoke the consultation process.

The procedure to define a service charge consultation rule is as follows:

1. Navigate to Quick Menu > Service Charges > Configuration > Consultation Rules. The Service Charge Consultation Rule window is displayed.
2. Click on New Consultation Rule. All fields are activated ready for data entry 1.
3. Enter a Description for the service charge consultation rule into the field provided 2.
4. Use the Tool tip text field to add contextual information that will aid the end user in managing service charge repairs that exceed financial thresholds set for those leaseholders expected to meet the cost.
5. Where end users are required to acknowledge the consultation rule notification, activate the Acknowledgement required tick box provided.
6. Using the Companies drop-down field, multi-select all companies for which this consultation rule is relevant, or choose the All option, as required 1.
7. Choose an Effective from date for this service charge consultation rule i.e. the date on which it came into effect 3.
8. Choose an Effective to date if the service charge consultation rule is to be reviewed on a specific date or to capture a change of circumstances; a blank field means the parameter will be continually valid.
9. Click on Save 4.

Tip

1 Where only a small number of parameter values are not required, activate the All tick box first and then de-select individual items from the full list, as appropriate; the All tick box will be automatically removed once an item is de-selected.

Note

1 Upon first access, all fields are automatically activated ready for data entry; hence the New Consultation Rule button is inactive.

2 System validation rules ensure that the description entered for each service charge consultation rule is unique for the effective period.

3 The Effective from date defaults to the current system date and cannot be left blank.

4 To amend the details of an existing parameter, select a service charge consultation rule from the alphabetical list or type its name into the Search Consultation Rules field. By default the list is filtered to show Current consultation rules. An alternative filter can be applied using the Select view drop-down field: Expired, Future or All combinations. Only a limited number of fields can be updated once a record has been created.

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System parameters overview

To define a service charge status code