Hi all,
I live in a block of flats in London and own the long leasehold of my flat. The property has a group of freeholders (myself included) made up of mostly the occupants of the building.
The building contains a ground, first, and second floor. One flat has built up onto the 3rd floor via an extension.
I live on the 2nd floor with bare, flat, roof above. I've checked the documents for the leaseholds of all the flats and it appears the roof above us is share of freehold. It is more recently been used by the other top floor resident for reasons we can't really confirm. However, I can hear furniture moving up there and I worry they're attempting to use it as an extension of their leasehold. I suspect that they'll want to use it for hosting friends.
The owner of that flat is also one of the share of freehold owners. There isn't any other access to the roof other than through their flat.
It is quite noisy and I'm fairly confident it isn't rated for any use beyond standard maintenance.
I expect that this will only continue to become a bigger issue.
My understanding is that, as a freeholder, and as the roof is a share of freehold, we can't really stop them from utilising the space? My concern is that I don't know what they intend to do up there and I worry that added weight from furniture and people could cause some structural issues.
I had, a year or two ago, mentioned in passing to this person that the roof is a share of freehold and isn't really suitable for any use.
What are the best ways to go about this? I want to say something to him about it, but I'm not confident my words alone would do anything. I can reach out to our property manager about it, but I'm also unsure whether that would achieve anything.
Has anyone dealt with issues like this in the past? Ideally the roof remains completely unused, but I don't know if that's viable via share of freehold? Any insight or advice from anyone who was had similar issues would be really useful.