Dear Jake and all,

Many thanks for your e-mails.

Those on this e-mail are invited to the informal meetings that we hold of the Parkhouse Court Resident’s Committee. As Peter Ball has stated, this committee is recognized by the de Havilland Resident’s Association. I am in the process of setting up the next meeting with Brian Wilson. I have attached minutes from the last two meetings and from the general meeting to which all lessees were invited in March 2010. As soon as I have a date I will let you all know, but as per Dere’s e-mail, it would be great if you could meet in the meantime to further discuss your experiences at Parkhouse Court and the information that I have provided below so that we can better assist you moving forward.

Let me respond to some of the queries that you have raised so that I can give you the most up-to-date information:

1. Sewerage Pumps: Barratt Homes are still responsible for resolution of this item. It is outside of the control of this office. Please contact Stacey Power on 01923 297300 to register your complaint directly. Barratt are in the process of upgrading the power supply and sewerage pump. They have recently erected heras fencing around the area and I hope that the works will be completed shortly. This will enable the pump system to be handed over to this office for management and will mean an end to the smells and frequent tanker visits to the site.
2. External Litter: Further to feedback from the shop owners, we have instigated additional litter picking every Saturday as well as every weekday. We have also doubled the number of people working on this for the summer months. Dominos and the Fried Chicken shop have also put bins inside their establishments for their own customers. The pedestrian areas are also swept using a vehicle by Serco (council contractor) as required. Unfortunately, Parkhouse Court is an open development and we therefore get a lot of litter from people visiting and passing through from Macdonalds, etc. As stated above we are increasing the visits by cleaners to get on top of this.
3. Smell in entrance to block 202 to 228: We have narrowed the cause of this down to a gap in the adjacent bin store wall that was punctured by Barratt Homes when they undertook works to reinstate the electricity supply last year. This will be filled shortly and will stop the smell from the bin store reaching the corridor.
4. Internal Security Door: From your picture, I believe that it shows the internal security door that leads out the rear and to the bin store on your block? Correct me if I am wrong. I will get this fixed with a heavier duty release asap.
5. Tree Destroyed: This will be removed mid-afternoon today and I will then replace this after the hot summer weather so that a new tree will have a chance to survive.
6. Students: I would like to discuss this further when we meet. In relation to the lease, the landlord (freeholder – Barratt) or its managing agent (Ian Gibbs) can insist upon consent to sublet. This consent cannot be unreasonably withheld and the lease does not state that renting to students is a reasonable reason to withhold this consent. We have written to lessees that we know are renting on two occasions in order to confirm if they are renting to students so that we can generate a database in this regard, but have had limited responses. If a tenant is causing a noise disturbance or other issues, we go through a process that is well documented and ultimately will result in us denying the consent to sublet to the lessee of those particular tenants at the date of their tenancy agreement renewal. Due to government legislation, it is not possible for us or others to evict renters at will without substantial evidence. This is something that David and Dere will confirm through their correspondence with the council, police and University authorities. However, if the lessee renews the tenancy agreement with the offending tenant, we will then engage solicitors to enforce the consent. Thus, at present, we apply administration charges to the lessee’s service charge account and deny them the ability to renew with the same tenants. This will always be a reactive response rather than proactive. What owner-occupiers have demanded of us in the past was to deny lessees the ability to rent to students in the first place. We have therefore consulted solicitors in this regard. They have stated that the most important thing is to have a clear policy on when consent can or cannot be granted. However, if as part of this policy you wanted to deny lessees the ability to rent to students, then, the current informal arrangement of the Parkhouse Court Resident’s Committee would make it hard to implement as it does not officially represent all the owners at the development. In order to form a recognized Resident’s Association under the Landlord and Tenant Act, 60% of owners must voluntarily set up the association and one of the rules of its constitution could be that student lets are not permitted. I do not know if being a sub-group of the dHRA will circumvent this as I do not know how this organization has been formed? Perhaps this is something that you can all discuss and come up with some ideas as regards your requirements. Of the 171 private flats at Parkhouse Court, we believe that only 34 are owner occupied, thus 20%. Of those that are let (137 flats), we would anticipate that over 70% (i.e. at least 96 flats) are let to students, though, this may be higher. Until such an association is organised by residents, the only option we have, is to follow the reactive procedure that I have set out in relation to lease transgressions such as noise, ASB, litter, satellite dishes, etc.
7. Internal Cleaning / Janitor: Again, I would like to discuss this further when we meet. The cleaners visit twice a week. Once to hoover and dust throughout and again to clean the lifts and entrances. The carpets are steam cleaned and the hard surfaces (walls, etc) wiped down once a year. Although we do the entrances/lifts twice a year. We also repaint the ground floor entrance lobbies at least once a year. We do monitor the performance of the cleaners, however, often, within several hours of them visiting, rubbish and litter re-appears. They will not remove large stains until a steam clean is due unless we specifically instruct them to do so at extra cost. This is often required at Parkhouse Court due to vomit. I will speak to the cleaners specifically regarding chewing gum as you suggest. Another option which would certainly improve matters would be to employ a janitor/handy man for the internal areas as well. They would not be able to live on site as we do not have facilities for them. However, there would be a cost impact on your service charge. To date, we have managed to reduce the service charge after the first year of operation of the development and it has remained static for the second year. We hope to stick to the budget again this year. We have to balance the pressure we are under not to increase costs against that to increase the level of service due to the nature of the problems at the development.

I hope that the above is of assistance and I will come back to you shortly with dates for the next resident’s committee meeting which I hope that you can all attend as the turn out at prior meetings has been rather poor.