It is now over 12 weeks (3 months) since the Woodilee Residents Association provided confirmation to RMG that it wished to end their role as Factor for the estate with their role due to end 30th April 2022. Confirmation of termination was served on Friday 28th January in order to give RMG, as outgoing factor, time to conduct an orderly transition to the incoming factor (NPM). In over 3 months RMG have still not given the RA, nor residents, a clear and final position on whether they intend to accept their role is over or whether they refuse to accept the vote and continue their role as factor (against residents’ wishes).
In the 3 months since termination RMG have sought through an external legal firm to argue that the vote conducted by the RA to seek a mandate to terminate their role was not in accordance with the deeds. The RA refute this. During this time RMG have also confirmed in writing to residents that they have ceased ensuring that critical health and safety checks such as the annual tree survey are completed because “NPM are taking over”. More recently they have started to send out direct debit schedules to some residents for the upcoming budgetary year (starting 1st May). RMG have not contacted the RA to agree a budget for the upcoming year. The direct debit schedules do not look correct in any case given the general annual budgets from previous years. Any resident receiving these should contact RMG for a clear stance on their position as factor.
In the interests of complete transparency below are the exchanges between the external legal firm acting on RMG’s behalf and the RA:
- 18th Feb 2022 – RMG legal challenge on the vote run
- 21st Feb 2022 – RA response to legal challenge
- 21st Feb 2022 – RMG’s email response when asked by the January 2022 tree survey had not taken place
- 25th March 2022 – RMG further legal challenge on vote run
- 28th March 2022 – RA response
- 28th March 2022 – Appendix to RA response
- 6th April 2022 – RMG further legal challenge on vote run
- 7th April – RA response
- 3rd May – RMG further legal challenge on vote run
- 4th May – RA response
- 8th Aug – RMG response (* added 3rd Dec 2022 to show complete communication trail, WRA did not respond to this, rather attended FTT instead)
Please note RMG intend to charge all legal costs for this quite lengthy back and forth to the residents of Woodilee.
Rest assured that the Factors Code of Conduct (Scotland) 2021 contains a number of clauses aimed at ensuring residents can replace factors should they so wish and there are repercussions (and recourse) for factors who fail to adhere to the code, accessible through the Tier 1 Tribunal process.
We await a final position from RMG by 30th April failing which we will proceed with a tier 1 tribunal submission. Unfortunately we cannot advise residents on what happens from 1st May. The incoming factor NPM are ready to start but RMG are refusing to perform any transition.
All residents should contact RMG and ask them to confirm their position, we are paying them currently to factor the estate so every resident has a right to an answer. Likewise, while their emails (shown above) confirm they have now stopped doing their job from late January, we will request the tier 1 tribunal service to review these statements and assess what financial recourse we might have.