Staithe Community Forum

Staithe Calender of Events

Whilst not currently active, we believe it may be helpful to have an interactive calendar on the on this site, with details of events, from communal gatherings on the Green, to reminders of the AGM

Do we really own Freehold or is Staithe Ownership Effectively Leasehold?

A Chartered Surveyor's perspective

Decades of experience as a Surveyor provides me a good working knowledge of the different forms of property ownership. My thoughts on Chiswick Staithe ownership are as follows:

What are typical Freeholds?

Buying a freehold implies complete ownership of a property, and with that the right and privilege to make changes to it, subject to statutory planning consent and building regulation sign-off.

When buying a freehold the owner generally assumes he will not be subject to the whim of a "superior" owner such as a controlling landlord. A man's freehold home is his castle.

And Typical Leaseholds?

Buying a leasehold, on the other hand, carries with it the expectation of a certain amount of interference and control over the property from its Landlord, as the Landlord seeks to manage their property in his/her own interest. The landlord's interests may, on occasions, conflict with the leaseholders, not least where the latter seeks to make necessary changes against (for whatever reason) resistance.

Chiswick Staithe under the microscope

Many years ago, in the early 1990s all of the Staithe residents were held on long leases, with the freehold to each of the properties being owned separately by a company. At that time the resident leaseholders collectively decided to purchase their individual freeholds, leaving the common areas to be owned by a new Management Company (Chiswick Staithe Limited (CSL)) which would be owned by residents. Each freeholder became an equal shareholder of CSL - one share per property.

Despite this move being a clear indication of the owners' intent to have more control over their individual homes, the select few current CSL Board members are now, in our view regrettably, using CSL to assert increasing control over all of our individual homes. Since 2024 annual patrols are now conducted by the Board and their professional team with the sole intent of finding breaches. Given there is no transparency provided as to the consistency of outcome it is impossible to judge how fair this process is. Formal notices are then issued with strict time limits on action. In recent years the Board have shown how easily they will use an army of shareholder-funded litigators to ensure their version of compliance, with the unlucky owner having to then defend themselves using personal funds.

The Board now uses the company website to publish a register of individual home design applications along with the Board's subsequent determinations, detailing where propsals are refused. Any freeholder selling their Staithe home will be obligated to disclose any of these details to interested parties. No doubt the same will apply to any breaches, however minor, thus alerting potential purchasers to what we believe is oppressive management control over their prospective home ownership. There is no formal right of appeal at the Staithe. If you were alerted to such onerous control over your prospective home when buying would you want to progress with the purchase?

Fouls whistled by these patrols have thus far included painting doors, drainpipes and woodwork to the select Board's preferred colours, re-pointing of brickwork etc. Recently the Board have broadened their searches to maintenance related matters not referred to in, or related to the Management Scheme. Where will this end? This appears far from the intended path the 1990s leasehold owners were headed.

In the two short years since the commencement of these walk-arounds I can already provide examples of the Board demanding works to be carried out on private freeholds which for years they have failed to apply to such Staithe common areas as they administer.

Whilst from a legal standpoint Staithe owners technically own their freeholds, the progressively onerous manner in which recent Boards have lately stewarded the Estate means that for all intents and purposes, our ownership has already become more akin to a Leasehold, similar to the Leasehold ownership experience from before the collective enfranchisement in the 1990s. Unfortunately it is worse, as the current Board, in Case Study 1, apparently had little interest in how their decisions affected the individual ownership, quiet enjoyment of, and property value, apparently taking an inexplicably cold (from a professional standpoint) approach to dealing with a freeholder under its control.

It also means the freehold owners are subject to the control of self-described "voluntary" helpers controlling the ownership experience of their homes. As is set out in other pages of this website, if you disagree with the Board's decisions they have shown how willing they are to dip into shareholder funds to pay for expensive litigators to protect their decisions, regardless of how ridiculous the latter may seem. This is not the case with a more usual leaseholder-freeholder relationship, where the Landlord has much less scope to spend other people's money on expensive legal assistance, in this case against a freehold shareholder.

With the systematic use of "legal privilege" to avoid disclosure of their instructions to and advice from their litigators, transparency of our Board's decision making process is also evidendly lacking.

See the web page "Case Studies" for more details of the unfortunate recent freeholder experience at the Staithe.

What do you think?

Which of the above ownership models best describes our ownership at the Staithe, and which is your preference?

Following this year's annual Board inspection this Staithe property was issued with a formal notice to rectify two Design Guidelines/management scheme "breaches".

Points for anyone able to find what they were!!

In due course, we willy try to create an additional web page on this site listing reported breaches, to enable residents to compare and comment on the Board's determinations.

Management Scheme - click here to download a copy

The Management Scheme is a document to which all Staithe "freeholds" are legally bound. Its original intention was to ensure the upkeep of the common parts, and was clearly a "light touch" on the individual freehold properties. It was to be run by and for the freeholders, but can be susceptible to Board overreach (regardless of intentions) from self-described voluntary helpers - the Directors. When mistaken, or acting seemingly unreasonably, the Board have been quick to utilise teams of solicitors to protect their positions at the expense of subscriptions collected from the freeholders.

No one would question that professional advice is sometimes needed to run the Estate, but there should, surely, be access to instructions to the shareholder-funded litigators (that is, the Board's questions to their lawyers), and most cases also the advice (and options) given to our stewards (the Board) so the freeholders (who own Chiswick Staithe Ltd) are able to understand the Board's motives and intentions. Keeping this information hidden simply invites suspicion.

Design Guidelines - click here to download a copy

Linked to the Management Scheme, again this is a legal document, so if any subjective element is disputed, even in relation to your own freehold, the Board can and have frequently threatened litigation to pursue their ends.

Whilst the Board's lawyers are funded by shareholder (freeholder) funds, for their part individual freeholders have to fund their own legal defence or else give up and accept the Board's directions, however unreasonable they might seem (see "Case Studies" webpage on this site). There is no right to appeal at the Staithe and as mentioned above, all advice leading to Board decisions can be, and usually is, hidden behind legal privilege.

Director Guidelines - click here to download a copy

Click the above link for a copy of the Directors' Guidelines, originally prepared by Mukti Jane Campion, who is presently a CSL Director.

All would agree such behavioural guardrails are needed for those in privileged positions of power. However, where genuine concerns are aired by freeholders the Board have, on numerous occasions, used shareholder-funded solicitors to protect themselves from genuine and understandable queries of potential wrong-doing on their part.

As stated above, there is nothing wrong with the Board using shareholder-funded solicitors but in the case of Chiswick Staithe Limited most, if not all, instructions to and subsequent options given and advice from the Board's legal teams has been hidden from disclosure by legal-privilege. We question whether this is acceptable, especially when the target of potential litigation is a single shareholding family. Transparency has been sorely missed.

We have previously questioned the Board's manager, about what we felt were instances of the Board's apparent non-adherence to the Guidelines (lack of impartiality and conflicts), and the response was that the Guidelines were just that, i.e. not legal and thus only discretionary. Given the Board's repeated claim that they follow all professional advice, this flavour of counsel is of concern to us.

Mould, Health and Works Issues

see Case study 1 on the "Case Studies" page of the website

Chiswick Staithe Limited's (CSL) Official Statement on the website

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