Residents in one of Manchester’s most famous buildings have been given a month to pay thousands of pounds in service charges, in what an MP said was an “egregious example of leaseholder abuse”.

Flat owners in the Grade II-listed Express building were ordered to pay £7,000 in just 28 days on 19 and 20 February and now have just over two weeks before the charge is due.

The residents’ association has since launched a tribunal against Artisan, the head leaseholder. One resident, Emma Stothard, said she felt trapped and confused and she could not afford to meet the demands without taking out a crippling loan or remortgaging her home.

The building was designed by Sir Owen Williams. Built in 1939, it once housed the Daily Express’s office in the city. Its art deco design, which features rounded edges and square-framed clear glazing, is similar to the one designed for the paper on London’s Fleet Street. A resident said: “Everyone who comes here loves the architecture and design and that’s why we came here to live.”

Lucy Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, has written to the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, over the “outrageous” demands. “It’s just another terrible example of the lack of recourse and the lack of say and voice and accountability that leaseholders have in these situations,” she said.

Residential Management Group (RMG), one of the companies involved in the Express building, was criticised recently for ordering residents in a Manchester tower block to pay huge fees to replace flammable cladding.

Stothard has had to consider remortgaging her home because of the charges. She said: “They put a lot of things on [the service charge bill] that don’t happen. So window cleaning costs, I mean, these windows haven’t been cleaned in a long time.” She said the windows in the flat had been broken since she moved in and were held together with duct tape.

Stothard and her partner were drawn to the buzz of the city centre and moved there from Whitefield, a Manchester suburb. “It’s just a bit of a worry that we’ve gone from having a house where we paid 69p a year leasehold, which was just amazing, to this,” said Stothard.

The average price of property in Manchester is £203,196, according to Zoopla, with a flat costing on average £185,684. Stothard and her partner paid £285,000 for their property.

Emma Stothard in her flat. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

On the hot bank holiday weekend in May last year when they first moved in, the lift was broken and had been for some time. “We had to move our lives up four flights of stairs. Luckily the neighbours came out and offered to take a chair or a table up for us,” she said. “It wasn’t a great start but we realised our neighbours are a community who have had to come together because of all the problems here.”

Residents have to deal with three companies that oversee various parts of the building. PJD took over ownership of the building from Artisan in 2017 and is essentially the freeholder. PJD granted a lease to Artisan, the head leaseholder, for the residential units, which in turn granted the leases to residents. Artisan is responsible for the residential parts of the building.

RMG is the managing agent and communicates between the residents and Artisan. Work that PJD wants to do to the building is charged to Artisan and Artisan passes the charge to residents. The service charges include window repairs and repairs to the residential areas and people living in the building said these “are all required” after being neglected over many years.

Justin Herbert, RMG’s operations director, said: “We totally understand the concern of residents in the Express building regarding the charges they face to pay for the works required to the structure of the building.

“The leaseholders have been consulted over the works in line with the Landlord and Tenant Act which outlines the costs and we have also engaged with the residents’ committee. However, we cannot dictate the payment terms as the head lessor has demanded the funds in line with the lease to complete the works. We will continue to update the residents on the progress of the works and answer any questions they have.”

A solicitor representing Moya Ball, the managing director of Artisan, said: “The leaseholders were aware of the works that the head leaseholder was going to be undertaking and were invited to participate in those proceedings and put their thoughts forward. They chose not to do this.

“The leaseholders have issued an application to the first tier tribunal pursuant to section 27a of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the tribunal will determine the issues the leaseholders have raised. That is the appropriate forum for these issues to be considered and my client is confident that it will satisfy the tribunal as to the way it manages its service charges.”