Hi Lambda. This query often comes up during our meetings.
In practice organising these things come with a lot of responsibility and demands from people; if the perceived benefit is great enough perhaps people would come together and organise themselves on lines such as your suggest. If people were paying fees towards legal work, then the people running such an organisation would have larger responsibilities than the Forum does currently. There was a fees-based Camden Leaseholders Association some time ago (and Peter Wright may be along shortly to correct me if I have the wrong name) many years ago but that is now defunct.
From the Forum’s perspective, the consensus is that our constitution doesn’t allow us to do this, so we operate with that in mind when we engage with Camden Council and try different things. I personally think the Forum would welcome alternative attempts at getting Camden to improve, although I would suggest that one challenge would be identifying suitable legal cases; it’s probably helpful to note that from time to time the Forum has wanted to find “no win, no fee”-style lawyers and struggled to do so.
One other pain point is that realistically some leaseholders would pay and others wouldn’t (and would benefit from the free advice).
Best regards,
Paul Ginsberg, Camden Leaseholders’ Forum member