Buyers who paid thousands of pounds for one-acre plots and who later found out that there almost certainly never be any construction will face the millionaire seller in court next week.
About 180 people are being sued by Terracorp Limited who had failed to pay their covenant or services charges on the plots of land which they bought from Terracorp that is owned by Alexander Deschauer on which there is hardly any development.The Terracorp Limited v/s Mr. Martin Kearey, Mr. Olatunji Alaba Dairo, Mr. Shanmuganathan Karunakumar and others case is being heard at the County Court at Central London. As it stands today, out of the 180 defendants, about 40 of them have had an out-of-court settlement with Terracorp Limited.
Buyers paid between £10,000 and £30,000 for these plots from a network of companies owned by Baron Deschauer, a Canadian who lives in Britain. The buyers all claim that salesmen promised them that, by the time they had completed five years of interest-free payments to pay off the cost they would have permission from the local council to build properties.
However, Deschauer denies the claims, which a judge said could not be proven. The buyers say that they have since been saddled with £300-a-year costs because of covenant charges in the contracts they signed when they bought the plots stating that they had to pay for the upkeep of roads and other facilities.
A group took legal action against Deschauer to stop him from charging this sum because no roads — or anything else — had been built on the land. The land is in Hertfordshire, Kent, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Nottinghamshire, and part of the designated green belt, so there is little chance of getting planning permission to build, and it was never applied for.
Next week Deschauer is appealing in the High Court against a ruling in September that found in favour of more than 180 plot-holders on the issue of covenant charges. If his appeal is unsuccessful, he could be forced to pay back hundreds of thousands of pounds.
