Summary of the IoD Service charge seminar in London 26.11.2009

27.11.09

“Change we can all believe in” was the title for the year’s most important commercial service charge seminar held at the IoD, Pall Mall, London on Thursday 26 November 2009 sponsored by Property Solutions.

The event brought together the outcome of significant academic research from London Business School, Loughborough and Kingston Universities with a panel of experts and well-known property industry stakeholders who presented their views to a 120 strong audience from 60 leading property industry organisations.

Dr John Calvert of Loughborough University Business School presented the findings of the 2009 Loughborough Report which showed that compliance with the RICS Code of Practice was significantly improved from last year although there was still much to be done to achieve the best practice standards set by the RICS in June 2006. Despite closer adherence to the Code, tenants are not seeing a corresponding improvement in value for money.

Saleem Jin & Svetlana Tsourikova, MBA graduates from London Business School reported their findings as to how the credit crunch has impacted on UK commercial service charges and what needs to be done to resolve the significant problems they identified from their interviews with 33 stakeholders from the worlds of landlords, tenants, managing agents and other industry stakeholders.

Dr Timothy Eccles and Dr Andrew Holt of Kingston University summarised their comprehensive and evidenced based report into the issues found in service charge accounting practices, compliance and disclosure. This was based on the qualitative and quantitative analysis of a statistically representative sample of service charge documents and a number of in-depth interviews, leading to the need for proper auditing processes to ensure:

• Financial compliance
• Lease compliance
• RICS Code compliance
• Value for Money

Following the academic reports, Vivien King of Bond Pearce gave a lawyer's perspective of changes needed in the commercial service charge industry and Christopher Hedley, IPD Occupiers reported IPD’s views on service charges and market efficiency looking at the current state of the industry, the satisfaction gap as shown by the most recent tenant’s survey and the need for successful benchmarking.

The audience also heard a series of opinions and presentations from

• Graham Chase of Graham Chase & Partners & RICS
• Matthew Punshon of The Asset Factor
• Peter Forrester of Savills
• Chris Edwards of Commercial Property Advisors Ltd
• Julian Lyon of General Motors

who then joined together as a panel to answer questions from the delegates which resulted in a highly interactive and dynamic debate.

For more information on the presentations and to download the slides please click here.

To learn more about the new service charges audit service please click here.

Please download brochures of all three reports below.