Our public face along with fifteen residents, past and present, of the Grand Folkestone, attended Folkestone Magistrates Court on Thursday 3rd Aug 2017. The residents past & present were led by the chair of the Association of Residents in the Grand (AORG), Mr
Peter Cobrin (pictured). He represented the AORG in Court 1 held in front of Judge Tidesley OBE & Mr P.A.Gammon MBE, to resolve and decide upon case number CHI/29UL/LRA/2017/0001. They were sitting as the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), to hear an application for recognition of AORG by their landlord, Hallam Estates Limited, represented by Mr Michael Stainer, a director of the company. Many of the residents who came along for a Grand Day out, were part of the 2014 class action that saw Hallam Estates managing agent removed and replaced by a tribunal appointed manager and receiver, Mr David Hammond of CR Childs of Hythe.
The original application was filed in Oct 2016 and after months of protracted submissions and counter-submissions between AORG & Mr Stainer, came before the tribunal.
In his opening submission, Mr Cobrin described the situation in which residential leaseholders, who number 43 out of 62 flats, meet the entire costs of maintaining the Grand. He quoted Mr Stainer who had conceded that the Commercial occupants of 25% of the Grand were occupying their space “rent free” and therefore not contributing to the overall maintenance of the Grand. He went on to describe how 18 flats, all jointly or individually owned by Mr & Mrs Stainer, were used exclusively as holiday lets and also did not pay towards the maintenance of the building. Mr Cobrin concluded his introduction by producing chunks of concrete moldings that had fallen onto his balcony, as evidence of years of neglect of the Grand, that now requires over £1 million for repair and restoration. The main principal of his submission was that the application for recognition, fulfilled all the basic criteria as to numbers and percentages of service charges, and that there was a history of very poor realtions with the landlord dataing back to the 1980’s. He also made reference to the uncertainty caused by the compulsory winding up of the Grand Folkestone Ltd, in Sept 2016 by HMRC and the ongoing situation following Mr & Mrs Stainer’s arrest in 2015, at the instigation of HMRC.
(Mr Stainer leaving court on Aug 3rd 2017)