Your service charge is your legal apportionment of the share of the costs incurred in maintaining, renewing, replacing and insuring the communal areas and structure of your building in accordance with the terms of your lease, for example, costs for cleaning the communal areas, ground maintenance, lifts maintenance, repairs and maintenance within the communal areas.
An estimate of service charge expenditure is produced every year which details all services and maintenance anticipated and the likely cost, it also details your apportioned share and how much that will be.
The costs of these services and contracts are reviewed annually and maybe subject to change due to level or frequency of services and maintenance required or changes in legislation.
We understand that there maybe times when you feel you do not wish to contribute towards the service charge, be that due to a complaint or management issue with your building. Whilst we fully accept there will be rare occasions of frustration, by withholding your service charge this will have a detrimental effect on the management of the building and its services.
We would actively encourage you to talk to us about any unresolved issues for the good of the site.
Should communication not be forthcoming then as your managing agent we have obligation to uphold the terms of lease and recover service charge monies.
If you notice something that needs fixing within the communal areas or grounds then let us know straight away either by phone, email using the app or through the online portal. We regularly visit every development under our care but sometimes repairs arise in between visits that need urgent attention. It is also far better to know about a problem when it is small and fix it, than to wait and potentially let the problem get worse and more costly to repair.
Once we know about a problem, we will investigate the matter fully and take action to rectify the issue. Emergency, health & safety, security & access issues are always attended to as quickly as possible. We operate a 24h emergency telephone line to ensure that genuine emergencies can be tended to at any time of the day.
More routine maintenance however, may be combined with other works or tendered in the interests of efficiency and value for money. Dependent on the scale of the works, some repairs require statutory consultation before works can commence. The emergency telephone line will not handle routine maintenance issues and these should be reported by email to your property manager or discussed during office hours.
Planned redecoration and major works do not need reporting as these will already be scheduled into a professional long term maintenance plan and budgeted for accordingly.
Further questions? Contact us
You can change your address by logging into the tenant portal or by clicking the link here which will take you to another page to complete and one of our team will be in touch to confirm the change once you have submitted the form.
You can change your correspondence address by logging into the tenant portal and editing the ‘My Details’ page or alternatively by clicking the link here and completing the request form. One of our team will be in touch to confirm the changes.
You can set your ‘Method of Correspondence’ by logging into the tenant portal and editing the ‘My Details’ page or alternatively by clicking the link here and completing the request form. One of our team will be in touch to confirm the changes.
At the start of each financial year a service charge budget is prepared and issued to all homeowners detailing line by line anticipated expenditure. At the end of each financial year, the actual costs incurred are reconciled against the service charge budget and certified accounts are produced by independent accountants.
These year end accounts detail whether there has been an 'underspend' or 'overspend' for that financial year and this is shown by line item also against budgeted costs.
The lease or transfer deed will detail the frequency in which your service charge demands will be issued. these could be annually, quarterly or monthly and are payable under those terms.
Payment can be made by an agreed monthly payment plan, telephone / internet banking or by debit or credit by either logging into your designated client login page or by calling our office. If you have any queries regarding your service charge account please contact us to discuss.
Most modern day leases contain a provision for the Landlord/Management Company to raise anticipated service charge demands which is issued in the form of a service charge demand / budget.
The service charge budget includes provisions of services to maintain your development which may include cleaning, gardening, utilities, fire safety as well as administrate costs such as accountancy fees, management fees.
The apportionment you will be required to pay will be detailed in your lease or transfer deed.
Best practice is for Managing Agents to produce year end accounts and service charge certificates within 6 months of the developments financial year end. Leaseholders have a legal obligation to contribute to their allocated proportion of actual costs incurred.
The service charge certificate will detail the total payable by the leaseholder as well as the total anticipated service charges demanded during the related financial year. Should the proportion of actual costs incurred be greater than the total of the anticipated demands, the leaseholder will be required to make payment of the balance.
However should the proportion of actual costs incurred be lower than the total of anticipated demands, a credit will be made to the leaseholders account to be offset against future demands.
As Managing Agents, it is a requirement of our ARMA and RICS accreditation that our procedure for Client Monies is available and published. The Client Money Protection Scheme for Property Agents Client Monies (Approval and Designation Schemes) Regulations 2018, defines Client Monies as ‘money received by a property agent in the course of English letting agency work with the meaning of section 55 of that Act; and held on behalf of another person’.
This procedure details those controls which exist over our Client monies and explain how client monies are kept safe, used for appropriate purposes and in accordance with those regulatory bodies for which Inspired Property Management are members. You will find a copy of our client monies procedure here: IPM Client Money Control Procedures.
The Government introduced Advice Note 14 (AN14) in December 2018. It has had unintended consequences in that it effectively requires buildings to conform to today’s building safety standards rather than those at the time it was built. Prior to this as long as the building was signed off when it was built, that was deemed sufficient.
This has led to a number of problems: please click on the link to find out in more detail what this means for leaseholders.
RICS Client Money Protection Scheme. RICS operates a Client Money Protection scheme (CMP scheme) in the UK. This scheme provides protection, as a last resort, in instances where an RICS Regulated firm is unable to repay a client’s money, up to the limits and exceptions set out in the scheme rules. IPM are members of this scheme, which can be evidenced by our certification here
Inspired Property Management is committed to providing a high quality service to all of our clients. However we acknowledge that on occasion’s things can go wrong. When something does go wrong, we need you to tell us about it. This will help us improve our service. Please click here for the Complaints Procedure 2020.
All feedback is important to us, by clicking the link here, you will be able to provide us your comments. This will only take a few minutes of your time and will be invaluable to improving our service for you in the future. Thank you
As a leaseholder you are required to pay for the buildings insurance. Dependant on the lease this maybe invoiced through the service charge or directly from the freeholder.
The responsibility of arranging the insurance may be the freeholder or IPM.
Leaseholders must ensure they place their own contents insurance. Should be an investor landlord we advise you to take guidance from an FSA approved broker to ensure you have the correct level of insurance in place to include alternate accommodation.
The building insurance is subject to change. It is standard practice that the building have a Reinstatement Valuation Assessment conducted to determine the correct level of the buildings sum insured. This will have an impact on the buildings insurance policy which may see an increase annually. It is vital that the property is adequately insured. In the event of under insurance any insurance claims maybe repudiated or subject to averaging.
Under the terms of your lease, there will very often be a requirement to get consent on a number of issues such as subletting, pets and alterations. Consent is required to ensure the terms of the Lease are adhered to and to make sure that your property and development is maintained in an orderly manner for all residents to enjoy. For further information please reach out to your dedicated property manager.
A solicitor will need to be instructed to act on your behalf in the sale process which will include the issuing of an LPE1 pack. We ask that your Solicitor contacts our sales team to make us aware of the impending sale as we can provide additional services to help facilitate the sale process. Your solicitor will be able to contact us at sales@inspiredpm.co.uk
If your mortgage lender or equity release company require information our sales team will be able to help with their request.
Click here for further information which will take you to the fire safety page being changed