Oh bugger... building works and freeholder

[Cloo]

If they're involving a solicitor, you should too, imho.

They haven't yet used them with us, although the freeholder has been consulting with his. They said they were going to send us a letter from her at one point, but the freeholder actually came back pretty amicably after that, because frankly they had no call to at all.

I'd rather we weren't the ones unleasing the solicitors first, in any event.

 

[moose]

No, absolutely, but if they ramp it up, you should too.

 

[Cloo]

He's come back basically vetoing our proposed structural engineer because they're not members of a certain trade organisation (although he was recommended to us by a surveyor/architect and has been practising for over 30 years) and that's just plain obstructive and he's probably not even within his rights to do so. Plus he's started saying we need to find an FMB affiliated builder again.

gsv will talk to a solicitor tomorrow - I'll try to get through to the Leasehold Advisory Service who hopefully will have some useful info on this kind of thing.

Essentially, his current objections could only be answered by us finding, say, Bob Smith Builders Ltd, manager Bob Smith, who is a member of the FMB and a fully qualified structural engineer (to avoid any problems of blame in the event of an insurance claim) and that's just bullshit. He might as well be requiring us to use a contractor who's half Ghanaian and half Belgian or something, it's that arbitrary.