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Obvious question, what does the lease say?
In my situation I owned the upstairs flat of a house conversion and I was responsible for all roof repair costs and, from what I gather, this isn't uncommon in London.
Bad for costs of repairing a roof. Good for adding a loft conversion.
aggi-
Obvious question, what does the lease say?
It defines my domain as:
ALL THOSE several rooms known as Flat B on the First Floor or the Building up to and including the ceiling plaster and including the floor covering the floors and including the plaster of the external walls and further the internal walls dividing the rooms and parts of the flat and one half (severed vertically) of the internal walls of the said Flat dividing the Flat from any common parts of the Building including the front door of the Flat (which for the purposes of identification are shown on the plan or plans annexed hereto and thereon edged red)
Basically the inside of the flat and the walls within the flat, up to the ceiling plaster.
Roof isn't specifically mentioned... but I'm currently looking through it carefully and comparing to the lease of downstairs.
Found mention of the roof... it's in both my lease and the lease of downstairs in the same wording:
The Lessor will whenever reasonably necessary maintain repair and redecorate and renew:
(a) The external walls and structures and in particular the load bearing walls and foundations joists roof storage tanks gutters and rainwater pipes of the Building
(b) The gas and water mains pipes drains and electric mains cables wires in under and upon the Building or any part thereof or any part of the Building or any part thereof and enjoyed or used by the Lessee in common with the lessees of other parts of the Building
So it appears to be a shared cost... we own from our paint / plaster inside... and share all structural and building costs.
Velocio
What to do when the roof probably needs replacing and there is a freeholder and 2 leaseholders.
I'm the leaseholder of the top floor, the roof is leaking in a way that suggests multiple badly done DIY patches (from the inside!) are no longer holding up. Initial assessments from roofers (yet to receive the quotes) suggest scaffolding as large areas need re-tiling.
To me: Once we're at the point of scaffolding we may as well re-tile the whole roof. The roof is old, many tiles are not straight or are chipped and cracked, the felt inside has long gone. There's no record of when this was last done but visually from the street it's the oldest of all houses around.
But... to the downstairs leaseholder, they're broke and £1k is a figure that scares them and they wish to have the cheapest option no matter what. So have no appetite to go from £1-3k to £8-14k.
Is this something I can force? It's a shitty thing to do but the thought of another patch up job (even a decent one) doesn't feel like the wisest thing.
For an idea of the state of the roof right now: Several tiles missing, ability to put arm through the holes, rain comes through into large buckets, in various places someone in the past nail-gunned insulation to under the tiles to hide the degree of damage and to wick the moisture over a larger area so that it reduced impact - it was the heavy rain this weekend that finally overcame that solution and has caused ceiling damage.