Roger Southam

Every stop and turn there is an announcement or commentary about the market. All the while there is the serious business of the leaseholder and their homes. LEASE holds stakeholder meetings every 6 months and at the last one in December there was discussion after a comment that a leasehold property is not ownership. Of course this is nonsense. Even rental is ownership, it gives you a right to your home. There is a debate about leasehold being good or bad and I genuinely believe that misses the point. Leas

You cannot please all the people all the time! This is one of the truest statements I know. It is certainly true when you are dealing with a large population with the potential for differing views. Anyone who has worked in service, and anyone who has tried to lead in anything, knows this. Just think about your favourite team in whatever sport you care to choose. How many times do you  disagree with the manager or tactics? How many times do you hear an outcry on social media and in the press beca

Over the last nine months I have had a lot of conversations about the state of leasehold management. I have encountered the nuances of the soft side of management. When calls go unanswered; when information is not supplied; when the leaseholder feels they are not getting service are all the soft areas that are vital to the management process of a building.    Although I genuinely believe managing agents’ service levels have improved over the last five years, there will always be examples of poor service,

On 9th July there was the latest in the leasehold improvement roundtables hosted by Sir Peter Bottomley and Jim Fitzpatrick at Portcullis House led by Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. The purpose of these is to look at leasehold issues, and explore how and where to improve the issues and how to resolve matters. It is interesting how much time and energy is going into the search for how to make the leasehold market function better. The number of different organisations looking at professionalising the res

After five months I have now got my feet under the table and I am enjoying the role and challenges of chairing the Leasehold Advisory Service. There have been some interesting communications and issues to address and there have been some unexpected matters. Being stuck in purdah over the election period was interesting and thank goodness it is now over. Of course, now the election is finished the polls were proven to be misleading. That is all academic now and we have to see what the next five years brin

I became non-executive chairman of leasehold advisory service (LEASE) on 1 January 2015 and the first three months have offered a steep learning curve to understand the requirements of leading a governmental arms-length body. I find myself sucked into issues and online comment, from specific matters to general queries. I am finding everything that I have said or written in the past is scrutinised and quoted back at me as some rallying call for what we should be doing going forward. The one thing I am ol