[Simon Kelemen]

Dear Member,

Following our email earlier this week, I am writing today to share the results of our member survey. We had a brilliant turnout with over 215 plots responding—and 100% of respondents gave their full support for the FBOA to seek legal advice regarding the service charge.

Thank you for providing such an overwhelming and unified mandate. It gives the committee immense backing as we move this forward.

Current Status & Next Steps

Backed by your unanimous vote, the committee has officially instructed our solicitor. We have already compiled and forwarded ALL correspondence and documentation between the FBOA and Away Resorts (which is extensive) for their formal review and advice / next steps.

Because of the volume of paperwork involved, the solicitor is now methodically building our case. We do not anticipate being in a position to update the membership on the formal legal advice or Away Resorts’ subsequent responses for at least the next 4 weeks. Rest assured, we will share relevant updates at a suitable meeting or opportunity as soon as we can.

The Financials: Protecting FBOA Funds

The FBOA constitution allows the committee to authorize up to £2,000 for legal challenges without a full ballot. Following initial discussions, our solicitor has capped their estimated costs at £3,000.

To maintain momentum, we have started the work under our £2,000 threshold, and given the 100% support in the survey, we will comfortably manage the remaining balance up to a strict cap of £4,000 (allowing a small buffer for safety) without letting the work stall. The FBOA has more than sufficient funds to cover this comfortably—we have intentionally saved and protected our reserves over the years precisely for an instance like this.

What We Are Fighting

As a reminder, our primary pushback is against Away Resorts’ sudden attempt to rewrite long-standing agreements and cost-sharing assumptions.

• Cost Share Changes: As an example of the cost sharing challenge, for many years, both owners and management have operated under an agreed 50/50 split for reception costs. Away Resorts are now trying to increase the owners’ share to 85%. If allowed (and other cost share changes), owners will end up subsidising Away’s commercial rental operations, causing a large, unfair spike to our service charges for 2024 and subsequent years.
• Wider Estate Cost Challenges: As well as the cost share allocations, we are also actively challenging the new Finance Director on a number of other sudden, substantial cost increases being passed onto members, including the meadows road, street light repairs, pool repairs, sleeper replacements, roof repairs, and the Blue Anchor tarmac issues. Whilst some of these may be relevant costs to be borne by owners then we are also challenging to ensure any works are of a sufficient quality.

Our goal with this professional legal backing is to firmly protect members from these unnecessary, commercially inequitable, and unfair cost rises.

Thank you again for your responsiveness and total unity on this matter. We will be in touch as soon as we have a substantive update.

Best wishes,

Anthony