Despite admitting its own district heating networks are at the end of their life with unreliable and unacceptable heating and hot water outages plaguing residents every winter, Southwark Council is refusing to let leaseholders try their luck elsewhere.
Although anyone who has managed to purchase the freehold of their property can ask to disconnect from a heating network, the local authority prefers – in some ways understandably – to keep flats linked to the system as every property that disconnects pushes up prices for neighbouring tenants.
But the result is that leaseholders suffer outages just as regularly as tenants, but also have to bear the financial burden of major works costs – often running into tens of thousands – all while unable to extricate themselves from the poor service.
The process around disconnection – who is able to do it and how – has been fairly secretive until now with the News being told of cases where freeholders have spent in excess of £20,000 and months negotiating with the council to get sign off.
In its newly published policy, the council explains: “The council does not support individual properties (either tenants or leaseholders) disconnecting from its district and communal heating systems for reasons of efficiency, system imbalance, decarbonisation and the increased burden of cost upon remaining connected properties.
“The council cannot prevent freehold properties from disconnecting, however, if the owners bear all costs of disconnection.”
The policy explains that the “current average disconnection fee” is a staggering £39,500.
It goes on to confirm: “There is no provision within the council’s lease agreements that entitles leaseholders to disconnect.”
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