Serviced Office Clients Evicted from MLS Serviced Offices in London

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Serviced Office Company MLS has received more bad press this week as news of unhappy evictees from closing West End Great Portland Street and Warren Street businesses centres circulates amongst the serviced office industry.

 

It is rumoured that the economically-minded serviced office company may be facing legal action from clients who are angry after receiving notification of the evictions by email rather than in person and having been given less notice than stated in their contracts.  The ex-tenants, who are all small business clients, are also in danger of not getting their deposits back.

 

The closures come after subsidiary MLS Business Centres Management was put into liquidation by MLS Group because of a drop in demand for semi-serviced accommodation which the company had specialised in.

 

The upset comes as further bad news for the serviced office section of MLS Group which has staged a large operations scale-down of its UK serviced office business centres over recent months after reports of money troubles in 2008. 

 

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15 thoughts on “Serviced Office Clients Evicted from MLS Serviced Offices in London”

  1. It has been independently proven that serviced office solutions, aside from their flexibility advantage, almost always reduce the overall cost of office space for all sizes of businesses in the UK:

    “Our research clearly demonstrates that serviced office space has become truly cost-effective in all scenarios.”

    Carolyn Munton, Director of Marketing and Communications, Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply.

    https://www.churchillhouseoffices.com

  2. I read in Property Week that tenants were only given 2 weeks notice, if thats true that is really poor! Im suprised MLS seem to be struggling so much, you would have thought that cheap office space would be doing well in the recession!

  3. dave mcdowell

    I was a client who was kicked out. received a letter on a Monday saying that they would close in two weeks at the end of the month. Two days later I received a letter saying they might not make it to the end of the month. They used my security deposit as operating capital (a legal trick by calling it a “service retainer”. I am now trying to get my ~2300 back from the liquidator.

  4. Thank you for your comments Dave and sorry to hear about your troubles, if you require advice and help in finding alternative office accommdation in London please give us a call on 0800 085 5050

  5. Graham Thorne

    I am the accoutant for a client that rented offices from MLS in London and moved out in May 2006 – i.e. almost 3 years ago. The deposit was never repaid and when I put the pressure on for repayment recently I was told about the liquidation of the company. It would seem that MLS have been retaining deposits not just recently but for several years and this can only be termed dishonest behaviour by the company.

  6. Can anyone tell me who we can approach to look into this “service retainer” issue as it appears MLS have been keeping these and not returning them for a number of years. The group is going into liquidation but these same directors are setting up a new company as we speak so whose kept all the money from these service retainers? Where is it?

  7. Graham Thorne

    @ Bel :
    The liquidator is supposed to prepare a report after he has wound up the company (or comapnies in this case) which I understand goes to the Insolvency Service who then consider whether the directors have been guilty of behaviour such as to warrant their disqualification as directors (although quite how effective this is in the real world is a moot point). I had the following in an e-mail from MLS:
    “The details for the liquidators are : BRI Business Recovery and Insolvency contact Marco Piacquadio email: mpiacquadio@briuk.co.uk
    You can make your point to the liquidator direct
    although if you feel strongly enough about it I think there would be no harm in contacting the Insolvency Service to ask how to go about raising your suspicions with them. I will be doing that shortly. Also – what other companies are the directors setting up now? It would also be interesting to know if the parent company MLS Group PLC guaranteed the debts of its now apparently insolvent subsidiaries and if they did not, what their auditors have to say about that in the filed accounts.

  8. This site is an open forum; you can browse for MLS related articles and see other people’s comments regarding the company for your information. At Easy Offices we sit independently within the market place and give impartial advice, representing a number of serviced office operators in the E1 area. If you would like to talk to a member of our sales team regarding business centres in E1 you can call 0800 085 5050 or you may like to search for properties at our main website, see https://www.easyoffices.com/Serviced-Offices/uk/London/London-City/EC1

  9. MLS Hove centre has just shut down. We were given 3 days notice! No deposit, no written information, just chucked out! Said that they were ‘probably’ going into administration. No details of who the administrators will be. Lots of very angry people! Anyone considering using MLS should stear clear.

  10. We have been left in total confusion, the landlord of our building has taken back the office and kicked MLS out, but nobody from MLS has ever spoken to anyone, we have no idea if there is an administrator as different parts of MLS seem to have different companies and some are trading and some not?????????

  11. My company was resposible for redecorating all the offices, believe me it is not only you who are suffering as we have not been paid at all and now risk loosing everything. MLS are quite happily taking on more offices with what looks like many peoples deposists and our money. My advise steer well clear of anything to do with MLS!!!!!!!!

  12. Does anyone know what is happening with the MLS offices on London Road, Bracknell. According to our contract we cannot break our lease until August but are concerned about getting kicked out at short notice and losing our deposit anyway. Should we just find alternate accomodation, move out and stop paying?

  13. In short yes!! everyone has lost their deposits! and contractors arent being paid!… MLS staff were made redundant without redundancy money! and we hear that administrators are being brought in this week or next! Get yr stuff out while you can! Mr MLS (of Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire!) has pocketed the money and run! How very ‘christian’ of him!

  14. Surely in today’s market when those landlords not being held to ransom by their banks to refuse to let business accommodation at a prevailing market rental, MLS and others cannot compete with landlords willing to offer short-term licences or tenancies at below market. Also on the point of rental deposits, surely these should have been kept in a separate account and not used by the business to fund itself, particularly when the directors must have known there was a possibility of failure, they held these deposits on a constructive trust for the benefit of tenants and are therefore in breach of that trust and as trustees thereof with a fiduciary duty could and should be made personally liable to repay deposits, notwithstanding any sanction that may be applied for possibly trading while knowingly insolvent.

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