‘Devastated’ nan’s three years of heartache and sleepless nights
64-year-old lost £30k invested in failed buy-to-let apartment
ANAN living in a caravan after “losing more than £30k” to a Signature Living development says her life has been “devastated”.
Juliet Ignatiev, 64, from Southport, invested £31,000 in a buy-to-let apartment as part of the Kingsway House project on Hatton Garden in Liverpool city centre.
Intending to move to Australia to be with her children and grandchildren, she planned to live off the proceeds of her investment.
However, she claims that she has lost the money she invested.
Part of the Signature Group, the Kingsway House development looked to convert the city centre office building into apartments.
Investors like Juliet parted with sums for an apartment, used by the company as part of its ‘fractional sales’ approach.
The Signature Group, often referred to as Signature Living, became well known in Liverpool and further afield for buying up predominantly historic buildings and redeveloping them into luxury hotels, bespoke wedding venues and party-themed apartments.
Signature was run by husband and wife team Lawrence and Katie Kenwright, who were declared bankrupt last month.
Kingsway SLG (Signature Living Group) is the company behind the Kingsway House development.
On Companies House, Mr Kenwright is listed as a director. It has been in receivership since August 2022.
A new planning application for Kingsway House was made in September 2023. The applicant was named as “Signature Living (in administration)”.
A previous application for the project had been considered by Liverpool City Council’s planning committee in April 2021 and it was resolved that it would be granted.
However, the agreement was not signed and the elapsed time since meant the application had to be reconsidered.
The proposal of the new application was to “change use of ground and mezzanine floors from former offices to 16 residential apartments (Use Class C3), with office space and carry out associated alterations”.
This was the same purpose as the initial application.
The new application was approved, subject to the completion of a legal agreement. This has not yet been completed and the final decision cannot therefore be issued yet.
Last week, the Serious Fraud Office announced it is carrying out a £140m fraud investigation into the Signature group, having raided three properties and made four arrests.
The latest update from the SFO stated: “All four individuals have been released pending further investigation.”
About the investigation into Signature, Nick Ephgrave QPM, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said: “The scheme offered attractive returns and used much-loved local landmarks to lure investors.
“We have people up and down the country left out of pocket and buildings left derelict at the centre of our cities. Today’s arrests and searches will help us reconstruct exactly what happened. This is now an active criminal investigation.”
Juliet said that she is among those people left out of pocket.
She said: “I sold my house originally and wanted to go and live with my daughter and grandchildren in Australia. I was going to live off the income of a buy-to-let property.
“In 2019, I contacted an agent who told me that Hatton Garden would be my dream property. He said in email that it would be available, according to Mr Kenwright, to let out in January 2020.
“I thought that was brilliant, I thought I would be able to start getting my rent and live off it. I saw all the glossy brochures and went up to visit the site.
“It did look like a building site at the time but I was just persuaded that there were a few delays and it was all going ahead fine, my apartment would be ready.
“He recommended using a conveyancer who had worked a lot with Mr Kenwright.”
Juliet’s sale agreement showed that the reservation fee was £5,000 and the deposit was £26,087.50. In total, the purchase price was £207,250.
She said that she paid the reservation fee in January 2020 and then the deposit in March 2020, meaning that she had exchanged on the apartment.
The sales agreement had a longstop date of March 31, 2021.
This is the date that conditions must be right for completion to take place.
However, the agreement said that the longstop date could be extended by 12 months “where the seller is prevented
JULIET IGNATIEV from completing by acts of God, war or terrorism or any other matter or thing not wholly within its control”.
Juliet says she kept waiting to see progress after she exchanged.
She said that the longstop date was extended by 12 months due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was said to constitute an ‘act of God’ and affected the construction industry.
This meant that Juliet’s wait to see any return from her investment went on. She became increasingly worried that the development may not happen.
She said: “There I was with no available money, no home, no work. I’d given everything up to go to Australia. I kept waiting, we had another visit to the site in August.
“I talked to Mr Kenwright’s agent, who told me that the project had stalled because Mr Kenwright had diverted our workforce to Old Hall Street (another of his Signature Group projects), to bring that out of administration.
“He also said that all of our deposits had gone into construction.
“And then my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, so I started getting carers’ income. But it was incredibly distressing, the whole thing. It hurt my mum to see how hurt I was the whole thing was just awful and it dragged on and on and on.”
Juliet said she was served with a completion notice in November 2021, with building regulations said to be signed off.
She claims she was then asked for the full sum, which took her by surprise as she did not believe that the development was actually complete.
She then decided to rescind her investment. A spreadsheet appears to show that she had successfully rescinded her investment and was owed a total of £31,587.67. She says she has not received that and is £31,000 out of pocket.
Juliet said: “I can remember walking up and down on the deck outside my caravan and then thinking ‘well at least I’ve got the children’. It was that bad that I literally wanted not to wake up the next morning.
“My life was devastated. It’s been three years of heartache and sleepless nights.”
Juliet now lives in a caravan in Devon, having sold her house with the intention of moving to Australia and living from the proceeds of her investment.
She claims that she has made a number of attempts to contact Mr Kenwright and his associates, to no avail.
She said: “I’m obsessed with it. The amount of times that I have called them, left voicemails. I’ve emailed. I’ve got absolutely nothing back, there’s been no response at all.
“I wanted some sort of response and explanation. I just felt totally powerless.”
Repeated attempts have been made to contact Mr Kenwright for comment.
In 2019, when presented with claims from investors who said they had struggled to get money back from the Signature Group, Mr Kenwright said that only a small number of his investors have ever had any problems and insisted the company was then communicating with its investors.
He also said investors would get all the money they are owed once properties were sold on.