Burges Estate covenant set to be lifted after eight-year battle (From Southend Standard)

Burges Estate covenant set to be lifted after eight-year battle

3:00pm Friday 8th March 2013 in Echo News By David Trayner

BATTLING residents can at last quash a legal condition which has been used to demand up to £50,000 for permission to alter their homes.

After an eight-year battle, Thorpe Estate Ltd is preparing to offer families of the Burges Estate - which stretches from Southchurch to Shoebury - a chance to buy their freeholds and lift a restrictive covenant which allows the firm to charge for permitting changes.

Burges Estate Residents’ Association, which represents more than half of the 1,800-home estate, voted overwhelmingly in favour of accepting a draft offer for leaseholders to buy their free hold, complete with covenant, for £1,500 - while current free holders can lift the restriction by forking out £750.

Cheers and applause rang through St Augustine’s Church, Thorpe Bay, as members backed the proposal, which was emailed to Mr Woodley just 90 minutes before the meeting, which was attended by about 250 people.

Chairman Ron Woodley said: “This gets rid of the risks and all the uncertainty.

“For generations to come, people living on the estate will be free of the festering sore of these covenants.”

Thorpe Estate Ltd’s board of directors, which wanted to ensure a majority of residents would take up the offer before making it official, will now vote to approve it.

Letters will then go out to every household, offering them the buy-out option.