Summary of Management meeting held on 15/10/09
I attended this meeting with Gerardo Cabellero RyF, Melisa Alem, Sandra Rodriguez AEA and must apologise for the delay in writing this up but have been waiting for some photos to publish with this summary. I will publish these later.
Accounts – By December we should have a surplus of about 70k euros. This has been achieved by reductions in costs without a reduction in service level. E.g. turning off swimming pool, street lights etc. at times when they are not required. I thanked Sandra for the outstanding work she has done with suppliers to agree reduction in charges with the same service levels.
Communication boards are to be placed in a number of locations with updates etc. on community matters.
A number of owners have put rejas (grills) on windows and iron doors across hallways without permission. These owners will be given written warning to remove these at their expense and make good any damage. If they fail to do this within the requested time scale they will be removed by the community via RyF and charged for this, plus they will be charged storage for these items until they are removed from the site. Not only is the installation of these items against community rules (unless agreed at an AGM etc.) but some of these represent a safety hazard.
For example one of the gates has been installed at the top of a staircase cutting off access to the lift (if the lift stopped/broke down at the top floor people could be stuck in an enclosed area with no easy exit), lift switchgear (access needed for maintenance), and fire extinguishers in the upper hall way (extra fire extinguishers could be needed by people on others levels)
The photographs I have show the some areas affected are near 2.07.02, 3.9.21, 3.10.21, please note the listed apartments may not have installed these.
Also, washing lines and sun shades have been installed and the owners will be asked to remove them.
The road repairs should be completed by the end of this year if the works go to plan and the weather stays dry.
Debt – Under new EU laws a debt in one country (i.e. Spain) can be served on the individual in their own country (i.e. the UK). In England a Spanish debt can be pursued quickly by using a European Order of Payment (EOP) in your local County Court.
This will pursued until a judgement is achieved which can be a very quick process in the UK (weeks not years). This judgement will be made against their UK assets, including their home. This could result in the loss of UK assets and a CCJ (county court judgement) that could affect their UK credit rating.
The process does NOT cost the community any money as the company that pursue the claim add their costs to the total debt taken to the court. This process has been used very successfully at one of the other RyF/AEA communities over the last few weeks.
The details of Duquesa Village debtors were in the process of being translated for the Debt Recovery Agency (a UK Company with a very good track record) so that they can issue the orders in the UK, and I suspect that this has been completed by now.
Two large Spanish banks own some of the properties (about 200 between them), the fees are being paid by the one of the two banks, the other has not paid and that is being addressed.
This message was last edited by manilvajl on 15/11/2009.