Managing agents and residential blocks in Smallfield

Communal garden maintenance in Smallfield

Shared lawns, parking court beds and hedges for Smallfield’s blocks of flats and managed developments.

Flats in Smallfield sit among the houses. In 2011 the parish had 144 flats out of roughly 1,800 homes, and the neighbourhood plan shows the Chapel Road apartments among its typical house types. So communal garden maintenance in Smallfield is mostly about blocks of flats and shared grounds where residents know each other and notice everything.

Communal beds and hedges at local blocks of flats are already part of our regular work. You get a written annual schedule, one fixed price invoiced monthly or quarterly, and an itemised quote you can put in front of directors or leaseholders. Residents see the same faces each visit.

Block of flats garden maintenance, piece by piece

A block of flats in Smallfield usually has the same set of features: a strip of lawn, a parking court, a bin store, a boundary hedge and some planting by the door. Each bit needs looking after or it shows. Our schedule covers mowing and edging, beds weeded and mulched, hedges kept off paths and parking bays, and the bin store kept tidy. For anyone managing a block of flats, that level of written detail makes the service charge budget far easier to set.

Leaves, gullies and a village that floods

This is the part agents in Smallfield shouldn’t skip. The village sits in a shallow clay valley, and the county council’s report on the November 2022 flood found that blocked ditches and watercourses made things worse. Communal grounds maintenance has to allow for that, because leaves in a parking court gully do the same thing on a small scale. We build leaf clearance from paths and gullies into the autumn visits, and keep mowers off grass that’s too wet to take them.

Blocks and communal grounds in Smallfield: your questions

Anything else, just ring. You’ll speak to the people who do the work.

We already have a specification. Can you price it?

Yes. Yes, line by line, once you’ve sent it over. No spec yet? We’ll walk the grounds with you and draft one.

Do you work for residents’ management companies?

Yes, and for managing agents and freeholders too. We’ll invoice whoever holds the contract.

Can we see your insurance certificates?

Yes, certificates are available on request for your files.

Can the contract roll on each year?

Yes. Most of our communal work runs on a rolling twelve-month basis, with a walk round each year to adjust the schedule.

What happens if a resident complains about the grounds?

Pass it on to us, or give the resident our number if you’d rather. We’ll look at it on the next visit, or sooner if it’s something like a hedge blocking a path, and let you know what we’ve done.