Estate Management

Our aim is to provide clean, attractive and safe neighbourhoods for you to live in. To do this we have the following services which support this: our caretaking service, estate inspections and grounds maintenance.

You can find out more about our aims and how we deliver these services below:

Our caretaking service aims:

We will:

Ensure clean, attractive and safer neighbourhoods.
Provide a high profile presence on our estates.
Improve the physical condition of estates through quick responses to residents' concerns.
Encourage residents to recycle and make use of the facilities provided.
Ensure animals do not cause environmental damage or nuisance on estates.
Deal efficiently with infestations of pests.
Try to identify those responsible for unauthorised dumping of rubbish and environmental damage.
Work with you and other agencies to help ensure your tenancy is successful and sustainable.
Work with the community and community groups to improve the appearance of housing estates.
Work closely with the tenants working group to monitor and continually improve our service.

Estate Inspections

Officers and local residents take part in joint estate inspections throughout the year. We also invite representatives from the repairs team, community safety team, environmental team, police, county council and local councillors who attend with us when they can. We look at all sorts of issues that may affect your estate or village, including untidy gardens, communal areas and open spaces, fly tipping, abandoned cars and graffiti. With your help we will look at ways of improving the area to ensure that your estate or village is a more pleasant place to live in.

For these inspections to be as successful as possible, we encourage local residents to join us whenever they can to make sure we are aware of as many issues as possible. Details of planned inspections can be found at the bottom of this page.

Grounds Maintenance

We employ contractors to maintain the green spaces in the estates where you live.

We also provide help to tenants that have difficulty keeping their garden tidy. If you have a disability or are aged over 70 years and have no one else that can help you, we may be able to help. We offer a service which includes:

Grass cutting (during the growing season)
Hedge trimming (twice yearly)
Pruning of trees

Estate Management

What we will do

We will:

Investigate all cases of illegal occupation of our properties and take the appropriate action swiftly to ensure trespassers are removed.
Respond within 2 working days to any report of an abandoned property.
Advertise a programme of inspections and invite residents, councillors and other agencies to join us on the walks around the district (the dates and times are published in Skyline magazine). Please contact us if you would like to join an estate inspection in your area.
Respond to all written comments/complaints about your estate within 10 working days of receipt. An officer will visit the area in question and dependant on the severity of the comment/complaint will address the problem with the appropriate tenant or team.
Remove any offensive or abusive graffiti on our properties or around our estates within 2 working days of the report being received. Any other graffiti will be removed as soon as possible to improve the appearance of your area.
Ensure that our estate supervisors visit your local estate on a regular basis.
Consult you about any improvements you might like to see carried out in your area when funds are available.
Consult you about how our estate management services are provided.
Remove abandoned vehicles as quickly as possible, if we are legally allowed to remove them.
Act quickly to reports of pests in the communal areas of our flats and on our land and work to eradicate them as quickly as possible or put a monthly baiting programme in place where pests are unavoidable (close to streams/rivers, food outlets, large green areas).
Provide information to our residents on how to deal with pests (rats, mice, wasps) in their own homes.
Inspect all garage sites owned by us and carry out reviews to continually assess their future sustainability.
Inspect and co-ordinate the removal of rubbish that has been dumped on our land. We will try and find out who has dumped the rubbish and they may be prosecuted.
Monitor grounds maintenance contracts and where necessary arrange with our partners for work to be done to bring the site up to an acceptable standard.