Keith Flower & Co Ltd

Mr Ankit Rana We would take the opportunity to clarify to you that we had advised you in writing on the 9th May 2024 before you confirmed our instructions by providing us with ID that we could not provide any guarantees on completion deadlines as we have no control over third parties. Your instructions were that our legal fees were to be paid by your proposed tenant and therefore their Solicitors were asked to provide us with an undertaking to pay our fees and to confirm that their client was in fact proceeding was received on the 15th May 2024 We identified additional work as you had failed to give us the correct/accurate information to start about your proposed tenant which resulted in further delays. It was clear that neither yourself nor the proposed tenant's solicitor had the correct understanding of the transaction resulting in us having to undertake substantial additional legal work to a transaction that was not straightforward. Neither yourself nor the proposed tenant's solicitor disclosed to us exactly the correct legal details of the incoming tenant which you advised us was a sole trader but instead we learnt on 5th June 2024 was a limited company. This was very important as this resulted in your lack of understanding of the AGA and the concept of why a guarantor should be obtained to protect you which Mr Chakera had to explain to you as you had previously agreed a number of unfavourable terms with the proposed incoming tenant. The work was undertaken within 3 working days from when the proposed tenant's solicitor confirmed their instructions to us on 5th June 2024 to start and the documents were all approved by you without any amendments clearly demonstrating to you that Mr Chakera’s experience and knowledge in commercial matters and his ability to actually work over the weekend for you at no additional cost. The newly draft deeds were issued to your proposed tenants solicitors on 10th June 2024 before midday allowing sufficient time for their client to be able to complete on 14th June 2024 which was the date that you had proposed and agreed with the incoming tenant. We had no control over what advice the proposed tenants solicitors provided to them or as to why they could not complete in the timescales had they wished to do so as there certainly was no reason why they could not have completed on the 14th June 2024. Sadly we were unable to provide responses to your emails on a 7 day a week 24 hour service which you for some reason expected. We went above and beyond advising you of the unfavourable terms you had already agreed with your proposed tenant and also that you had prior to instructing us, purchased this property at auction which did not have a good title and we advised you to pursue your grievances with the firm who acted for you previously in your acquisition with whom we understand that you had fallen out with before instructing our firm. You instructions changed on the 21st May 2024 as you now wanted a new lease rather than an assignment of the commercial lease and for advice on your existing lease which again demonstrated a lack of knowledge and understanding of the matter on your part. Only then did you realise that this was not a new lease that instead your tenant required an assignment of the existing lease. We also note that you are commenting on our staff’s state of mind which is unacceptable and should you not remove such comments immediately, we are considering taking legal action against you for defamatory comments and should this result in our firms reputation being tarnished or any form of financial losses to us, we may look to seek damages from you. As to your comments given to you by the tenant’s solicitor our experience was very different and our last contact with them was on 7th June asking us to reduce our fees, which we agreed to as gesture of our goodwill and also to further agree a deadline and we quote as follows “I have spoken to Saleem and propose a date for completion on Friday, 14 June 2024” from their email which we attained earlier on the 10th June 2024. It is unfortunate that your proposed tenant decided not to proceed as they had the opportunity to complete on the 10th June 2024 onwards considering that your agreed date to complete was by 14th June 2024 which we were are able to fulfil with three days to spare had your incoming tenant not changed their mind on proceeding with this their tenancy. Yours sincerely Keith Flower & Co Ltd