Six residents have started legal proceedings against a housing association in a row over service charges for their flats.

Some are also refusing to pay the monthly fees for their homes in Sandalwood Court in Barming, near Maidstone, after they suddenly went up more than £100.

While Hyde Housing is the freeholder of the apartments, the six residents are all either outright owners or have shared ownership in the leasehold.

They say the service charges are excessive and that Hyde, when challenged about the fees, has failed to provide a breakdown of how their bills are calculated.

Daniel Archer, a teacher, lives in one of the flats with his girlfriend Josie. He said: "Last year I was charged £277 a month. This year it has suddenly jumped to £405, for what? There's no lift, and the communal areas are only swept once a month."

Mr Archer lives in a top floor flat, for which he additionally has to pay a monthly mortgage of £620.

The six households have officially registered themselves as a tenants' association and their chairman, Carley Probert, has been trying to get an explanation of the service charges from Hyde Housing. Her service fee is £354 a month.

'It's impossible to sell up.'

She said: "The communication from Hyde is horrendous. You phone endless times and just get pushed from pillar to post."

She challenged her service fee last year, which had been even higher at £376 a month.

After six months, she was given a £70 rebate, but she still never received a satisfactory explanation of how the charge was arrived at.

She said: "Under Section 22 of the Landlords and Tenants Act, Hyde are supposed to provide us with copies of the invoices for all the costs they say they have incurred, but they don't.

"I and one of the other flat-owners would like to sell up and move. But it is impossible to sell when the service charge is so high."

She bought her two-bedroom flat from new almost 14 years ago.

Last week, Hyde's property manager for the block met with the residents but he was still unable to explain the charges to them.

They have now begun proceedings to take Hyde Housing to a First Tier Tribunal in the Property Chamber.

Additionally four of the flat-owners are starting a payment strike, refusing to pay the monthly fee until they have answers.

Most of the flats in the block are social housing, occupied by tenants who pay a rent to Hyde. It is not clear whether they also pay a service charge.

'We are being as transparent as possible'

Scott Lawrence, Hyde’s head of property charges, said: "We are aware that there has been a rise in service charges this year and we understand how distressing this can be for our customers.

"We are being as transparent as possible with the reasons behind these increases, which are a result of the increases in costs of services delivered to our customers.

“I can confirm that we sent a full breakdown of service costs, which included itemised transactions, to all customers in Sandalwood Court at the end of March 2021, regarding the 19/20 service charge statements.

"We’re sorry that this was a long wait, and have put procedures in place to speed up responses. Queries around service charges are addressed in date order and unfortunately it took longer than we would normally expect.

“For this year's service charges, we’re currently working through queries as quickly as we can, which would include requests for a breakdown of services, and we will be engaging with customers directly.

"We have already sent out invoice packs to many customers who requested them, including those from Sandalwood Court.”

Hyde Housing has previously been criticised over how it handles service fees.

In October 2020, the housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway published a report in which it found that Hyde was guilty of maladministration regarding the landlord’s communication about service charges.

It was also guilty of "severe maladministration" over its formal handling of a complaint from one of its tenants and finally the ombudsman found there had been "service failure" in relation to its record keeping.

Not only had Hyde failed to respond to the tenant's complaints over a long period of time, it then failed to respond to the ombudsman's own inquiries.

In that case, Hyde was ordered to apologise to the complainant and pay her compensation.

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