People facing unreasonable demands from their local authority landlords should not assume that recourse to a leaseholder valuation tribunal is the user-friendly, low-cost system of arbitration that your article portrayed (4 March, page 28).

This was something that I and fellow leaseholders discovered to our cost when our council instigated proceedings with a LVT.

The council drew upon the services not only of its full-time legal department, but also hired a barrister to present the case.

Of course it won – how could it fail with such disproportionate resources available to each side?

In our case the LVT even permitted the council to recover legal costs from leaseholders’ service charges.

Kate Gordon, Comment via Housing Today website

Source

Housing Today