Claiming Back FirstPort Service Charges

By Nige on May 21, 2022 at 10:00 am
Type: News Category: Service Charges
Tags: Announcements | Bloor Homes | FirstPort

For those interested in the charges being imposed by FirstPort as Managing Agent when the Management Company (MC) currently has no responsibility for the Public Open Space (POS), we have a (possibly) positive update.

On behalf of one household (i.e. not in relation to the Residents’ Association), we submitted a speculative complaint to Bloor Homes on 5th April requesting repayment of all charges imposed by FirstPort. We included a detailed legal argument for why we was complaining to Bloor (rather than FirstPort) and also why we didn’t think the charges were appropriate whilst Bloor is fully responsible for the POS.

After an initial flat-out rejection of our complaint, our insistence secured a complaint ref and we engaged with the Head of Customer Care. She did well in keeping us informed about progress of our complaint and last week she confirmed that Bloor Homes were prepared to reimburse us the £53 that FirstPort had charged us.

What’s key here is that Bloor Homes accepted our arguments but wouldn’t go as far as saying they agreed with us, nor that any precedence had been set. They are in the process of taking legal advice, jointly with FirstPort. We would expect at some point that they will form a legal argument to justify the charges. But at this point, they do not have sufficient evidence to push back.

We also highlighted to Bloor Homes that we will submit another complaint if/when FirstPort charges us again in the New Year. So, they know this isn’t something that is going away anytime soon. We are sure they will also be expecting a number of follow-on complaints from other residents in a similar position.

If anyone is interested in submitting a complaint to Bloor Homes to see whether you can secure a refund on the charges that have been imposed by FirstPort, let us know.