Your service charge goes towards some or all of these communal services:
- Cleaning of communal areas
- Grounds maintenance
- Window cleaning
Working with our tenants, we’ve developed a specification and set high service standards that we expect from our core team of contractors.
You can read more about what each of these areas involves and meet the contractors in our information leaflet here.
If you're in a retirement living or independent living property and would like contract specifications, please speak to your local site manager.
Winter works has started and due to weather conditions this summer, some contractors are running the summer programme a little bit longer in some areas. Please bear this in mind when contacting us. Below you'll see an example of the winter programme for one of our contractors. While this will vary between contractors, it'll give you a rough guide of what tasks they'll carry out.
Due to weather conditions, from time to time, the maintenance services we offer may be limited. If this happens, our team will add a letter to your service sheet, find out what each letter means by clicking the button below.
We know your communal areas are important to you, so we've put together some FAQs to provide answers about grounds maintenance, services provided and how to report a problem.
We've also put together some communal cleaning FAQs, to help you understand what services our contractors will carry out.
The aim of this specification is for communal areas to be clean, tidy and well maintained throughout the year. We will achieve this by:
- Having even and well-cut grassed areas (cut and drop)
- Clean and usable hard surfaces for public access
- Maintain minimal maintenance areas as and when required
- Make sure all hard surfaces (including external bin stores and drying areas), flower and shrub beds areas are weed, litter, leaf and moss free
- Maintaining hedgerows and shrub beds so they retain their shape and vigour throughout the year
Read our full grounds maintenance FAQs to find out more.
Standard and enhanced specifications
There are two specifications, standard and enhanced. Please take some time to read the specification by clicking on the words, so you know what to expect from our Grounds Maintenance teams.
General Needs and Independent Living properties will be on the Standard Specification.
If you're in a Retirement Living or Mutual property and would like to know which specification applies to your property, please speak to your local site Manager.
What level of service can you expect?
Communal cleaning takes place in two-week cycles (unless otherwise agreed), the main tasks completed during each visit include:
- Shared internal areas shall be kept clean, tidy and dust-free
- Depending on the type, floors will be swept, vacuumed, scrubbed and/or mopped clean
- Bannisters, handrails, handles and knobs, hand and kick plates, light switches, sills, ledges, skirting boards and light fittings will be cleaned and polished
- Interior and exterior communal lights will be checked and bulbs changed if at a safe height as required (non-emergency lighting only), any lights not at a safe height for our cleaning contractors will be replaced by our Midland Heart team
- Lift walls, camera lenses, doors, door frames, door tracks and lights will be cleaned and polished.
- Shared refuse room floors, interior walls and doors will be washed
You can find out more about Communal Cleaning in our brochure.
Read our full communal cleaning FAQs to find out more.
What level of service can you expect?
The window cleaning framework requires all windows, frames, sills and doors to be cleaned on a regular basis. The contractors will begin cleaning at the highest level windows to avoid any unwanted drips.
Ground level windows and doors will be cleaned using a cloth and blade, and for health and safety reasons, no ladders will be used as standard practice. The contractor will aim to remove all obvious drips and streaks on windows.
Windows above ground level will be cleaned using an environmentally friendly Pure Water Fed Pole System. This type of system allows windows, sills and frames to be cleaned without the operative leaving the ground, which is much safer for both the operative and our tenants.
The pure water cleans the windows without the use of detergents, using the water flow and a flexible brush to loosen dirt and leave the window even cleaner than using traditional detergents.
Water will be left on the windows but this will dry naturally without leaving any smears.
Window Cleaning Pole System
- Pure water
- No tap water
- Long pole system
- No harmful chemicals
You can find out more about window cleaning in our brochure.
If you’re unhappy with any of our services above, please let us know by clicking here, and we’ll look in to it right away.
Our Environmental Services are checked regularly for quality and value. We do this through three main channels:
Quality site inspections
These inspections are carried out by Estate Champions and Rangers. They focus on checking quality and how each contractor has followed the agreed guidelines. A simple pass or fail scoring system is used.
- Pass – awarded to contractors who fit within the guidelines
- Fail - awarded to sites which are either:
- Mostly within the guidelines but could be improved further
- Do not meet the required standard
Tenant inspections (Estate Champions)
We have recruited a group of volunteer Estate Champions who carry out their own independent inspections of their own communal area and other random sites. These inspections are crucial in establishing a balanced viewpoint of our services and wouldn’t be possible without the help of our dedicated tenant volunteers. If you'd like to become an estate champion for your area email customer.scrutiny@midlandheart.org.uk.
Tenant satisfaction
Each month we ask an independent research company to carry out surveys with a range of tenants on their overall satisfaction with Environmental Services in their area. The results of these surveys then form part of the overall scoring for our contractors.
