Southwark housing heating

Jan the old one wrote:

When leaseholders on Aylesbury estate first got a breakdown of their service charges they were amazed to find one service component of ..washing the windows of the balconies....plus regular maintence of the grassed area. One told me he had lived on the estate since it opened and had never seen a window cleaner doing them, and as for the grassed areas I remember picking ox eye daisies that were eighteen plus inches tall near Wendover!

Hi Jan, we have to pay a window cleaner ourselves in these blocks to clean ours. The council dont provide this service. We pay services charges on top for cleaning of balcony and lighting on it and outside and the communal garden to be cut. but with our balcony when asked the cleaner to clean a cobweb high on the ceiling in the corner he said his broom was not long enough and the council would not supply him with one, so we ended up having to do it ourselves. cobwebs are not vacuumed away either in the corners of the windows on the landing as the man is not supplied with such things from council, he just has a bucket and two brooms, thats it to clean with. Its not enough to clean the blocks to be honest. We have a hard floor but some have carpetting in it, I guess they have to vacuum it themselves. Council dont charge us half though for receiving half a service. We get charged for every single thing separately on top of our rent.

and the windows on the balcony parts looking out have never been cleaned by council, crack in one of them.

You are entitled to a reduction of any service charge to which you are not in receipt of