When you purchase a flat under a lease, you buy the right to occupy the flat for the period of years stated in the lease - this is usually 125 years. The Council continues to own the block and remains responsible for the maintenance of the structure and shared areas and services. High Peak Community Housing manages the flats on behalf of High Peak Borough Council.
- Nuisance and harassment
- Subletting your home, and
- Making changes in your home.
- Name of the landlord.
- Address of the property
- Purchase price of the property.
- Service charges information
- Description of your property and plan. For example, if your property includes a garden, this will be described in the lease. It will also show you which areas you share with other properties, such as a shared entrance hall or stairway.
Rights and Responsibilities
Your rights and responsibilities include :
Removal of Rubbish
You should not dump furniture and other large items in the shared bin stores.
High Peak Borough Council offers a bulky domestic waste collection service. There is a fee depending on the number of items to be collected. You can contact High Peak Borough Council on 0845 129 77 77.
Caring for shared areas
Flats may share gardens, stairwells, parking areas and bin stores. Please take care of the shared areas as you share the responsibility for maintaining them and nobody wants to pay extra for damage caused by carelessness. Please take care when moving furniture in or out of your flat, as this can cause damage to shared areas.
Insurance
You must make sure you have adequate property insurance. This is arranged through High Peak Borough Council.
Nuisance
Living in flats brings special responsibilities. Try to consider how your neighbours would feel before you do something that might be a nuisance. Examples of nuisance include:
- Playing loud music
- Slamming doors
- Shouting in the hallways – particularly at night
- Talking, hanging around or playing in the communal areas
- Allowing children to damage communal areas
- Not getting rid of mess and rubbish
If you think someone is causing a nuisance, the best way of resolving the problem could be for you to talk to the person causing the problem, as they may not know they are bothering you. If this doesn’t work, or you are afraid to speak with them, tell High Peak Community Housing and they will refer you to someone who will be able to help. Many problems can be solved through mediation. This is particularly useful where there appears to be a clash of lifestyles or personalities.
Sometimes there may be no solution to your problem. For example, babies and young children can be noisy but no one would expect a family with young children to move – even if their neighbours complain of noise.
If High Peak Community Housing cannot help you with your problem, they will tell you and explain why.
If your neighbours think you are causing a nuisance and complain to you, please listen to what they have to say. Most people don’t complain unless they feel they have no choice. Please solve the problem if you can.
Harassment
Unlike nuisance, harassment is usually a deliberate act planned to cause distress. Harassment often happens because of prejudice. Examples of harassment include:
- Threats of violence.
- Deliberate damage to other people’s property.
High Peak Community Housing takes all acts of harassment very seriously and will investigate any report of harassment. If a leaseholder is causing the trouble, legal action can be taken against them, as with any other member of the public.
Alterations
An alteration is something that affects the structure of your home but may not change the value of your home. Examples of alterations may include:
- Changing the layout inside your home, such as removing walls.
- You must have written permission from High Peak Borough Council (Estates Section) before you make any alterations.
You may also need the permission of the following:
- Bank or building society which has lent you money to buy your home
- Planning department of High Peak Borough Council
- Building control department of High Peak Borough Council.
Service Charges
The service charges you pay are made up of the cost of:
- Services we provide
- arranging those services – called the management charge.
This means that you pay for the service and you pay for High Peak Community Housing to arrange that service.
Every year you will be sent a service charge bill. This will tell you how much money was spent on the building in the previous year and how much you need to pay towards it.
What the service charge covers
High Peak Community Housing is responsible for providing the services described in your lease. If you live in a block of flats, High Peak Community Housing will arrange for:
- Repairs to the shared areas
- Re-decoration of shared areas.
- Maintenance of any shared garden or open space.
- Routine inspection of shared areas including minor repairs and waste removal.
The money received from the service charges is used to pay for services to all leaseholders.
High Peak Community Housing must consult with you first if we want to do major work that is likely to cost more than £1,000 – or £50 for each flat if there are more than 20 flats in the block. Repair and redecoration to communal areas can fall into this category, for example repainting hallways, stairwells and communal doors at regular intervals.
High Peak Community Housing has a legal duty to protect your health and safety and to provide the services set out in your lease, even though this may cause your service charges to increase.
The services High Peak Community Housing provides must be:
- of reasonable quality
- appropriate for the property – for example, a caretaker service may be appropriate for a large block of flats but not for a small block.
You are allowed to see invoices and other documents that support the summary amount of service charge spent. You must ask to do this within six months of getting the summary, by writing to:
High Peak Community Housing
Municipal Buildings
Glossop
Derbyshire
SK13 8AF
The service charge year ends on 31st March. Because we charge you in arrears, we always wait until all invoices have come in and been paid before calculating how much your share is. We will always invoice you within 18 months of work being carried out at your property. Bills are usually sent out in the summer.
Paying your service charge
Methods of payment are printed on the annual invoice. You may be able to agree a payment plan with the Council if your bill is high (for example if we have carried out a major repair).
If you have bought your lease from the Council in the last five years, your annual fee will have been agreed at the time you purchased. At the end of the five-year period High Peak Community Housing will calculate the actual costs and let you know if you have paid too much. If you have, we will reimburse you.
If you fail to pay the Council
If you do not pay your service charge invoice promptly we will remind you that it is due. If payment is still not received we will consider what further action to take, which could include:
- Getting your lender to pay, who will then add this payment to the sum you already owe them
- Referring your debt to an external debt collection agency
- Suing you for the debt
- Referring your case to a Leaseholder Valuation Tribunal
- Court proceedings to end your lease
Legal action would mean you might have legal costs adding to your financial problems. It is very important that you work with us to sort out any problems and keep us informed of your current position.
Appealing against the service charge
Tell us if you think your service charge is unreasonable. We will check the charges and correct any mistakes. If the charge is correct we will explain how it has been calculated.
If you are still not happy you can appeal. Follow the steps in the complaints procedure.
Repairs
Internal Repairs
You are responsible for repairs inside your flat. If you have central heating it is up to you to organise a service each year. For health and safety reasons your boiler should be checked every year and you should always check when the last service took place.
You are responsible for repairing leaks within your flat.
External and Communal Areas
High Peak Community Housing is responsible for:
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The damp proof course.
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Leaks from the roof, gutters and pipes in the shared areas.
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Repairing and maintaining the structure and shared areas.
What you can expect from the Repairs Service in respect of the above mentioned external and communal areas responsibilities :-
We will…
- Provide a variety of simple and convenient ways for you to report your repairs.
- Provide out-of-hours emergency service.
- Send you a confirmation receipt when a non-emergency repair has been ordered giving the number of the contractor and the date it should be completed by.
- Carry out repairs in the following time scales:
- emergency repairs - same day (or make safe if the repair cannot be completed);
- urgent repairs - within 7 days;
- non-urgent repairs - within 3 weeks.
- Group other repairs together into contract packages in order to provide a quality service to all our customers
- Provide an appointment system for repairs (except emergency repairs, where you should make access arrangements for us to carry them out on the same day).
- Operate an appointment system for the inspection of those repairs which need to be looked at first before the work can be ordered.
- Give you the opportunity to comment on the quality of completed repairs by including a pre-paid comments slip on repair receipts.
- Inspect a sample of completed repairs to check for quality.
Reporting a repair
General repairs – you can call the Housing Repairs Hotline on 0845 129 8071 or alternately call into one of our offices.
In an emergency
To report an emergency repair ring the Repairs Hotline on 0845 129 8071.
We will arrange for an emergency repair as soon as possible. Emergencies outside of office hours will only include those repairs needed to avoid serious health and safety risks or to prevent serious damage to your home. They include:
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Blocked and leaking drains.
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Serious storm, flood or fire damage to the property.
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Gas leaks, burst pipes and electrical faults in shared areas.
Our staff and contractors try to attend emergencies on the day that they occur. Please don’t ask us to attend a non-emergency or service call at night or at weekends (unless we have already made an appointment). These calls will delay our attendance at genuine emergencies.
You must stay in, or keep to agreed access arrangements. If you no longer require our attendance please let us know. If we attend and there is no access then we will cancel the repair and may have to charge you for our visit.
Information needed when reporting a repair
It is important that you give us as much information as possible when reporting a repair to help us order work as quickly and accurately as possible.
When reporting a repair, please let us know:
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Your full name and address
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The nature of the problem (eg: leaking guttering)
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The location of the problem (eg: leaking from the waste pipe)
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When we can get access to your home (eg: any morning)
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Any other important information (eg: a crime reference number if you are reporting a repair resulting from vandalism to the building)
How soon will the repair be done?
We will make every effort to carry out repairs as quickly as possible. Repairs are given a priority depending on the type of work that is needed. The priority categories are:
Priority 1 – extremely urgent – repair will be carried out within 24 hours
Examples include:
- Blocked drains.
- Gas leaks and electrical faults in shared areas.
Priority 2 – urgent – repair will be carried out within 7 days
Examples include:
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Replacement (broken) glass, where it is our responsibility.
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Running overflows in adjacent properties.
Priority 3 – non-urgent – repair will be carried out within 3 weeks
Examples include:
We may group together some repairs - such as clearing gutters or replacing fencing and gates - into contract packages to provide value for money and efficiency of our workforce and contractors.
What happens when you report a repair?
Emergency Repairs (Priority - 1)
When you report an emergency repair, we will ask you for access arrangements. The work will be carried out within the next 24 hours as long as we can gain access to your home.
Non-Emergency Repairs (Priority 2 and 3)
When you report a non-emergency repair, you will be sent a receipt that gives you details of the work ordered, the name and contact number of the contractor and the date it should be completed by.
If the repair is urgent (priority 2), we will ask you for access details. For non-urgent repairs, the contractor will contact you to make and appointment to carry out the repair.
We will offer you a morning or afternoon appointment wherever possible for a priority 2 or 3 repair. If you cannot make a daytime appointment you can ask for an early evening or Saturday morning appointment.
Sometimes we will need to carry out an inspection to assess the type of repairs before we can order any work.
Satisfaction survey
All repair receipt forms contain a pre-paid reply slip for you to give us your comments on the quality of completed works. Please take the time to fill this in so that we know whether we have done a good job or not and whether we need to make improvements.
If you are not happy with the quality of work carried out or if things go wrong, please contact the Repairs Hotline straight away on 0845 129 8071 and we will deal with the problem.
If you are still not happy, please follow the complaints procedure.
Improvements
Planned Maintenance
Planned maintenance is major improvement work that we carry out on a group basis for example to specified groups or types of properties or to a whole neighbourhood/area. Planned maintenance schemes can cover the replacement windows and doors, and major repairs to roofs and chimneys. Such schemes help us to reduce costs and enable us to carry out more improvements overall.
Better Homes Programme
We have a major investment programme to improve the entire housing stock that will affect leaseholders, as these contracts will reflect needs to maintain the structure. These may include re-roofing and drainpipes and external render and pebble dashing.
We issue an annual programme showing the work that is to be done in different areas – this is sent to all tenants and leaseholders.
Disruption
All these works entail some disruption, we will work with you to minimise this and provide you with as much notice as we can of works to be carried out and choices that will be available to you.
We are not able to provide decoration or allowances to assist after these improvements have been carried out. You will be consulted about this work, but if it is necessary for the maintenance of the whole building we will have to carry it out.
Heath and Safety
Works will involve disturbance, site cabins, materials, scaffolding and deliveries. We cannot move customers out of Neighbourhoods whist works progress, and we will take care to remove any risks to you. However, you must ensure that you adhere to any notices and advise children of the hazards in and around your property whilst work is underway. Please help us by reporting any vandalism or children on scaffolding to their parents, the police or us.
What you can expect from an improvement programme
We will…
- Give you as much notice as possible if we plan to do any major work to your home or your neighbours’ homes.
- Tell you how the proposed work will affect you as an individual.
- Try to give you choices where technically possible.
- Tell you when the work will start and how long it will take.
- Issue you with relevant details regarding each contract including the contractor’s details and telephone number.
- Be available to deal with your queries or problems associated with the planned works.
- Inspect all works carried out to your home once completed.
- Ask how satisfied you with completed works and act upon your comments whenever possible.
- Tell you what major works we have completed each year through the newsletter.
Consulting you
High Peak Community Housing will consult you if we plan to:
- carry out any major repair work, improvements or redecoration work on your block of flats
- make any changes in the way we provide services to you and other leaseholders.
We will send you our annual report, a tenant and leaseholder newsletter three times a year and seek feedback from you in regular leaseholder surveys.
High Peak Community Housing Leaseholder Forum
High Peak Community Housing has set up a Leaseholder Forum to ensure leaseholders of council-owned buildings …
- Are aware of their rights and responsibilities
- Can participate in work to improve the buildings
- Get help and advice when they need it.
You do not need to join the Forum as you automatically become a member when you buy your flat and become a leaseholder.
The Leaseholder Forum holds meetings twice a year. These meetings are open to any leaseholder and details of forthcoming meetings are circulated to all leaseholders.
You may also find it an advantage to join your local panel. There are panels across the High Peak made up of local residents, tenants and leaseholders.
Please contact the Tenant Involvement Co-ordinator on 0845 129 8075, or email mailto:gettinginvolved@hpch.co.ukfor more details about the Leaseholder Forum and the area panels.
Who to Contact
High Peak Community Housing 0845 129 8075
General enquiries
Bill enquiries
High Peak Community Housing 0845 129 8071
Repairs Hotline
High Peak Borough Council 0845 129 77 77
Lease agreements
Ground rents
Accounts and payments.
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