Residents at Cheswick Village, a new residential development in Filton in South Gloucestershire, have won a six-month battle to remove their property management agents.
They have switched the management of the 900-home site from OM to Downend-based BNS Property Management.
The move follows problems with maintenance and other issues at Cheswick Village, which is to include shops, a primary school, district centre and care home when it is completed this year.
A small group of residents, along with housing developers Redrow Homes, were successful in their bid to remove incumbent national property managers OM, previously known as Peverel OM, effectively bringing the village under local management.
Cheswick Village resident Sejal Hampson said: Myself and the other residents at Cheswick Village are delighted to have succeeded in removing our managing agents after they failed spectacularly to provide the services we needed and had paid for.
When I bought my home at Cheswick Village I knew there would be fees attached for both freeholders and leaseholders because of the amount of open spaces on the development but unfortunately myself and a number of other residents began wondering what exactly it was that we were paying our maintenance fees for.
From early 2011 when I moved in until early 2014 I rarely saw a maintenance person or contractor on site and nothing seemed to be getting done. I teamed up with other residents and together we requested to see the maintenance plans. It was then that we realised that the areas that freeholders should be paying for were actually miniscule and that we appeared to be paying for leaseholder areas too. Not only that, but we hadn't actually seen any work going on. We polled 100 houses to find out if other residents knew what they were paying for. Everyone felt the same - we're paying over the odds for a service which wasn't being provided.
When other residents and myself began to dig a little deeper we were horrified at what we found. We were being charged £44,000 a year for them to cut a grass verge which would only actually cost £3,000 a year to maintain. The charging structures were unbelievable and additional costs had been written into the deeds of our houses which stated that to be able to sell we had to pay them a quite hefty fee. To say work was done to a poor standard is an understatement.
We called a meeting with Redrow Homes and OM which was attended by local MP Charlotte Leslie. Following that meeting Redrow became very supportive instructing their solicitor to look into issues raised. We started to receive feedback from the Cheswick Forum and discovered that residents across each of the Cheswick Village hamlets were unhappy with the service. We compiled complaints lists, held residents meetings and gathered evidence before Redrow were able to eventually present it all to OM and give them their notice.
All together this took around four months of our time, blood, sweat and tears but it was worth it all. I'm proud of what we have achieved as it is notoriously difficult to remove managing agents. We even had people in a similar situation to ours travelling from London to find out how we were doing it.
We also had a say in appointing the new managing agents and I must say appointing a local Bristol company has been a great decision. BNS have been the instigators of great change for many people at Cheswick who can now enjoy their homes and community. We'll be forever grateful!
BNS Management, run by brothers Andrew and Ian Simmonds, took over the site from 1 January.
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