{"id":20005,"date":"2024-12-01T11:26:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T11:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=20005"},"modified":"2024-12-01T11:26:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T11:26:36","slug":"our-estate-pays-9000-a-year-for-grass-to-be-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/?p=20005","title":{"rendered":"'Our estate pays \u00a39,000 a year for grass to be cut'"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"BBCBBC<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

FirstPort charges residents more than \u00a39,000 a year to look after this balancing pond<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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“We feel fleeced. I feel as if I pay a second council tax to live where I am.”<\/p>\n

This is how Karen Stokes describes paying management company FirstPort to maintain land surrounding a small balancing pond near her home in Wigston, Leicestershire.<\/p>\n

The private firm is responsible for cutting grass at the pond, designed to prevent flooding, and maintaining the bordering fence.<\/p>\n

This year’s bill for the whole estate was \u00a39,031 – \u00a375 per household – and included contributions towards terrorism insurance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karen<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Karen says she spends weeks every year disputing new charges from FirstPort<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Eight years ago, Karen and Tony bought their new-build home at Waterside Gardens freehold, which means they own the property and the land it is built on.<\/p>\n

The couple did not receive a bill for the first two years, but, when they did, they say FirstPort demanded a fee of \u00a3117.23 per household.<\/p>\n

“But they hadn’t even been on site and done any work at the pond,” Karen says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karen<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Karen and Tony had hoped for a quiet retirement when they bought their home<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Outraged by the increase, the 65-year-old leafletted all houses on the estate and challenged the bill, eventually negotiating the lower fee for all 120 households.<\/p>\n

“We pay \u00a39,000 a year to have the grass cut twice a year, which is an awful lot of money,” Karen says.<\/p>\n

A breakdown of this year’s bill – seen by the BBC – shows only \u00a31,158 of the total figure went towards maintenance costs.<\/p>\n

The majority of the bill was for management fees – \u00a36,085 – and a small proportion – \u00a314 – was for terrorism insurance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A breakdown of the bill for Waterside Gardens in Leicestershire <\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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“It’s a real hotbed of terrorism in South Wigston, it really is,” jokes Karen.<\/p>\n

FirstPort told the BBC it was “common practice” to charge for terrorism insurance.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson claims it is “an important consideration when placing insurance across a managed development”, even if the likelihood of terrorism “may seem remote”.<\/p>\n

But Sebastian O’Kelly, director of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership charity, said: “I can’t see any reason why there would be terrorism insurance on this pond, except to make money for the managing company who placed the contract.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Supporting residents<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Karen says she now spends weeks negotiating the charges on behalf of everyone on the estate and is already preparing for the next bill.<\/p>\n

“I got a part-time job I never wanted,” she says.<\/p>\n

Separately, Pete Murray, a former parish councillor, set up a committee to help residents living on an estate managed by FirstPort in Fernwood, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, after he was repeatedly contacted by neighbours struggling to deal with the firm.<\/p>\n

“We would go through any issues they had, and then we would contact FirstPort to try and resolve these issues,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Pete<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Pete moved on to the estate in Fernwood in 2014<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Pete says FirstPort eventually stopped engaging with his committee and he has since stepped back from helping residents.<\/p>\n

“People were ringing me at home, knocking my front door, sending me text messages, phoning me,” he says.<\/p>\n

“I was physically drained. Not sleeping at night, worrying about it all the time.”<\/p>\n

But it is not just maintenance fees, the company also charges anyone who sells a home on an estate it manages – as Pete found out himself in 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘No choice’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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“To sell my home, I had to pay FirstPort over \u00a32,000 in fees,” says the 59-year-old.<\/p>\n

The fees cover the cost of providing evidence of the managed areas and insurance, which need to be sent to the buyers’ solicitor.<\/p>\n

“We had no choice, we were already committed,” Pete says.<\/p>\n

“We sold our house and we had to go.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"PetePete Murray<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Pete and his wife Karen bought their house in Fernwood in February 2014<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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More than 30 MPs wrote to the managing director of FirstPort earlier in November to share concerns after receiving complaints from constituents.<\/p>\n

When asked about the fees it charges homeowners who live on the estates in Wigston and Fernwood, a spokesperson for FirstPort told the BBC: “Service charges have risen across our entire industry.<\/p>\n

“Our fees are reviewed regularly to ensure that they are reasonable.<\/p>\n

“We take our responsibilities very seriously… we work hard to meet the high standards our customers rightly expect.” <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We are committed to bring the injustice of ‘fleecehold’ private estates and unfair costs to an end.<\/p>\n

“Next year we will consult on the best way to achieve this and we will include options to reduce the prevalence of private management of these estates – which are the root cause of the problems faced by homeowners.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What is the private estates model?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The private estates model is becoming increasingly common as strapped-for-cash local authorities, that would in the past have taken on public areas, are seeking ways to avoid extra costs.<\/p>\n

Instead of the council paying for upkeep of things like grass cutting, car parks and lighting, it is outsourced to a private company like FirstPort. <\/p>\n

About 1.7 million homes are thought to be managed under the private estates model.<\/p>\n

Eighty per cent of new homes sold by Britain’s eleven biggest builders are now subject<\/a> to estate management charges.<\/p>\n

A report<\/a> by the government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) accused companies of not allowing homeowners to switch providers, giving “inadequate information upfront”, delivering “shoddy work” and adding “unclear management charges”. <\/p>\n

Affected residents have dubbed the model “fleecehold”.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Laura Hammond<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source: <\/em> www.bbc.com\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC FirstPort charges residents more than \u00a39,000 a year to look after this balancing pond “We feel fleeced. I feel as if I pay a second council tax to live where I am.” This is how Karen Stokes describes paying management company FirstPort to maintain land surrounding a small balancing pond near her home in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpt.m2mbeta.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}