Committee Email: Fwd: Release-authorised: Dargavel Village – Updated Residents Notes

Date: Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 5:00 PM

Guys

PSB drafted pts from our meeting, plse amend/ comment or add suggestions where required. I’ll aim to send it to Richard on Friday morning.

Richard,

The Residents Association met again on 17 Feb 15 in order to review your feedback of the Residents’ Notes (dated 06 Jan 15), prior to the RMG hosted Residents’ Association meeting scheduled for 24 Feb 15 at 1830hrs, in Ingliston Country Club.

We, the residents, remain exceptionally keen to ensure that Dargavel Village is maintained and developed positively and understand that the success mechanism for this is to continued working as a team with RMG.  To that end we offer our full support and understand that managing a new development comes with many complexities due to the accounting of responsibilities between the builders, the Local Council and BAE.  That said, we do feel that in general the reply given to the Residents’ notes was un-detailed and insufficient.  Please see below points which we wish you to address at the Residents Association meeting on 24 Feb 15.

1. Sight of Documents.  We unfortunately have not yet received the documents which were requested in the Residents’ Notes (Line items 2.a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2g, 6)  that you had previously promised.  It is understood that you require the co-operation from BAE and your accountants in order to achieve this, however we believe that sufficient time has been given in order for them to respond.  Has the requests been hastened?

2. Development Circumference.  The village map contained within the RMG ‘Written Statement of Service’ encompasses the Pond and Bowling Club.  It is believed that ownership of both facilities will be disputed and as such more clarity is required ie at present the local Fishing Group believe the pond belong to them.  Moreover the residents do not wish to take ownership of local facilities which will ultimately incorporate a maintenance charge where the facility is already maintained by the original custodians. 

3. HOTO of Communal Areas.  You have stated in your  feedback to the Residents Notes Line 2d that the ‘process laid out’ for HOTO/maintaining communal areas is simple.  We are wary of accepting ownership of land that has not been developed to an acceptable standard ie conditions of paths through the wooded areas, poor drainage in sports areas, inadequate lighting levels along roads and paths etc.  Who decides what the ‘acceptable standard’ is? Who makes this assessment?  We are aware that by law the land has to be remediated prior to handover, however we would like to ensure that there is a secondary check in place to ensure that a maintenance cost does not one day appear on our bills which should have been rectified by another party at an earlier stage.

4. HOTO Dates of Communal Areas.  Without sight of projected HOTO dates from BAE neither the villagers nor RMG can look to project financial planning.   We remain firmly against being billed for lined items of services that currently do not exist and without projection HOTO dates may not exists for the next 5 years.  It is requested that RMG produce firm evidence as to why it would financially benefit the villagers by accruing a Reserve Fund in this manner.  If we were to continue with the current payment plan does RMG have the mechanism to calculate proportionality of refunds of the Reserve Funds (comparing a 4 year home owner to a 6 month home owner)?

5. Financial Calculations.  As the RMG Dargavel Village Representative we were dumbfounded to discover that you, of all people, did not have access to the ‘workings’ of the budget.  RMGs calculation of this were previously made public to independent solicitors and should be retained in RMGs files.  Without such clarification and assurances the Residents requested that RMG look to review each line item on our bills.  How many large financial outlays are expected in the projection throughout the next 4 years and does the reserve funds meet this or exceed it? At present we believe the latter. If it’s RMG’s intention to refund the residents at the end of each financial year we would need to ensure we had sight of the expected financial outlays in order to decide when refunds are appropriate.  Furthermore, if the reserves far exceed the projected outlays why should we remain paying for facilities that will not come to fruition for another 5 years. This would result in a situation where RMG simply collect money to again distribute (possibly un-proportionately) further down-the-line.  It is also preferred that this calculation be completed prior to us receiving any future bill.
6. Residents’ Association.  As previously discussed we believe the best way forward is to formalise our Residents’ Association, and as our subject-matter-expert, we wish to take you up on your offer of assistance to do this. Your assistance would be most appreciated.  We are aware that there is criteria to following and a constitution to be written, but your assistance would prove to be invaluable.  We believe that your meeting next week would offer us the first captive audience and would like to ask if you could announce the residents’ desire to establish a formalised Residents’ Association.  Furthermore would you be able to announce (if you agree that we can) that there will registers getting passed around the room and at the rear of the room for people to sign to say they support such a group being established and further indicate if they wish to be a member of the group.

I understand that we are bombarding you with requests and information, however we believe if we get it right from the outset it will benefit all parties.  We fully appreciate your work thus far, and thank you for adhering to our request for a meeting.

Kind regards

Kelly