FAQ

Ground rent is the rent that all Leaseholders pay to the owner of the land (the Freeholder or Headlessee). Terms for this payment will be clearly set out in your lease. Ground rent is strictly payable in accordance with those terms – normally annually or half yearly.

Your lease is a most important document and you should read it carefully and ask questions of your solicitor if necessary. Your apartment/property is a big investment and the lease terms will fundamentally affect the way in which your property is managed and maintained in the future. It pays to understand why the charges that arise out of the lease terms can help you to maintain and enhance the value of your property in the coming years. The lease will set out both your obligations and those of the Freeholder.

Your service charge is your legally agreed contribution to the shared costs of running the communal areas of the building. These costs would typically include items such as buildings insurance, cleaning, gardening, lift maintenance and general communal area repairs. The specific costs to which you are obligated to contribute towards are detailed within your lease.

Together Property Management prepares a budget for your property each year, based on the actual expenditure for the previous year and any proposed expenditure for the forthcoming financial years.

When setting a service charge we review historic costs, future trends and our knowledge of the particular development. As a starting point, we are likely to add an inflationary uplift but there may be some areas where we anticipate savings or where a service is no longer required. However, whilst we seek to provide an excellent service at a fair price, many of the costs are dictated by external forces such as new regulations, legislation and price adjustments from contractors, amongst other external factors that arise from time to time.

Once you have received your service charge demand you will need to pay your service charge as soon as possible. You can pay by cheque, bank transfer (BACS) and credit or debit cards via the Customer Portal here.

If you wish to make payment via bank transfer, the sort code is 16-16-11 and the account number is 10249490. Please also quote your customer reference when making payment.

Your buyer will usually want to receive information about the property, by way of what is known as ‘LPE1 Enquiries’, or a sales/management pack.  The quickest way to initiate this process is to ask your solicitor to email us at resales@togetherproperty.co.uk

Our dedicated resales team will then handle any further matters directly with your solicitors, including any enquiries or legal documents such as any Deeds, Licences and Notices that may be required.

We aim to deal with all enquiries as quickly as possible, as we appreciate what a difficult time it can be when selling your property.  In order to help us provide the best possible service please make sure it is your solicitor who contacts the resales team in the first instance.

You can register to use the portal here and will need to have ready your customer reference, your account name and the email address that we hold on your account. For security reasons, the system will require an exact match of these details in order for registration to be successful. Your username and password will then be emailed to you.

If you are unsure of the email address that we hold on file, please contact accounts@togetherproperty.co.uk to confirm or for us to update our records.

You can apply to extend your lease via the Customer Portal here or alternatively please email accounts@togetherproperty.co.uk.

In the event that the claim would be in respect of damage to the communal areas or the fabric of the building, then please contact the Maintenance Office on 020 8366 7070 in the first instance. Otherwise, if it is not affecting the communal areas such as a leak between flats, then the details of the claims process should be detailed on your insurance certificate. If you do not have your insurance certificate, you should be able to download a copy of this from the Customer Portal here or can be emailed to you upon request to the Accounts Office.

Please note that any insurance claims will be subject to an excess, the details of which will also be available on your certificate.

You can contact Together Property Management to report any repairs or faults in respect of the communal areas in a number of ways.

Firstly, by calling 020 8366 7070 or alternatively, you are now able to report this via the Customer Portal here.

If you are changing your correspondence address, please email accounts@togetherproperty.co.uk so we can amend our records or alternatively, you are now able to action this via the Customer Portal here.

Our Maintenance office, which deals with all maintenance and repair issues is open from 9.00am to 5.00pm Mondays to Fridays. The office is closed over bank holidays and from 24th December to the first working days in January each year. An emergency service is put in place to deal with out of normal office hours emergencies only, and should only be used where there is concern for the health, safety and/or security of a resident or building. These call outs will attract an additional call out fee over and above the costs of any repair work carried out, which in the case of an insured incident, will be covered by the insurers. If the required repair is not an insurance issue and is carried out to a communal area of the building then the costs will be covered by the service charge fund. However, should the repair required not be a service charge item (for example, where the repair is within a flat) then the costs will be recovered from the leaseholder.

The service is provided by Veritas Property Management Limited and the telephone number  is 0345 123 4357

There is a cost incurred in utilising this service and their approach is as follows. Firstly, after establishing that it is an emergency, they will triage the call over the phone and endeavour to resolve the issue without the need of a contractor. For example, in the case of a leak this may include talking the caller through stopping the water supply to prevent further damage which could be rectified the next working day.

To do this, a variety of methods, such as WhatsApp and Facetime, will be used to try and provide an accurate diagnosis and resolution to prevent the need for a contractor to be instructed. For this service the charge will be £50 + VAT.

Should this initial triage be unsuccessful, or the emergency is severe enough, a contractor will be instructed to attend. The charge for this will be £60 + VAT plus the cost of the contractor. Please note that this call charge is not in addition to telephone diagnosis fee detailed above.

Please note that this is purely for the purposes of communal area emergencies and therefore, should you or your tenant report an issue and it is found not to be communal, you will be held liable for any costs incurred as detailed above.

We aim to provide you with the best service we can at all times but very occasionally things can go wrong. If this happens, please let us know as soon as possible and give us the opportunity to put matters right and in doing so prevent any unnecessary frustration, or continued discontent. We offer a thorough complaints process which will give us the opportunity to put matters right for you as quickly as possible and in so doing learn from any errors we may have made and ensure we do not repeat them in future.

However, this formal complaints process will not cover complaints about another leaseholder or their sub-tenant, accounts queries, insurance claim issues where the decision lies with the insurers, or everyday matters such as reporting a repair or a breach of lease. If there is an instance where you are not happy with the level of service you have received from our organisation, please contact us so we can put things right: We are confident your concerns will be resolved. We recommend that you first raise your complaint with the member of staff you have been dealing with to try to resolve your concerns in a less formal way and to allow the problem to be resolved as swiftly as possible without the need for further redress.

Step 1:

In the unlikely event this more direct approach does not provide you with the resolution you seek, you may then choose to enter into the formal complaints process. Please ask to speak to a Department Manager who will work to resolve your dispute and understand where we have failed to deliver your service expectations. If the matter can be addressed by telephone upon receipt then the process will end with no further action taken. However, if the matter is more complex, we would recommend the complaint is put in writing.

Step 2:

If the matter remains unresolved following Step 1 then you should make a formal complaint in writing, clearly headed Formal Complaint, to

customerservices@togetherproperty.co.uk

Or by post to:

Customer Services
Together Property Management
P O Box 1319
Enfield
EN1 9ZJ

In order to resolve your complaint, we would ask that you include the following information and evidence, if applicable:

• An outline of your complaint explaining why you feel that we have fallen short of our best service
• What you would like us to do to resolve it
• Any specific details that you feel would assist us with resolving your complaint. Including, but not limited to:
  • Names of staff members you have spoken to in connection with the complaint
  • The Office in connection with the complaint
  • Time(s) and Date(s) of the incidence(s)
  • Telephone number(s) and or Address(es) you have used to contact us
  • Any written correspondence in connection with your complaint
  • Any other document in support of your complaint

If a written complaint is received, this will be passed to the Complaints Manager to investigate and resolve for you. Your complaint will be acknowledged in writing within 7 working days of receipt and a full and formal response will be sent to you within the next 10 working days. If we are unable to resolve the matter within the 10 working days as stated above, we will provide you with reasons why we could not meet this time frame and provide you with an estimate of when a full response will be received. After our final written response, we may deem the complaint closed. If we deem the matter closed then we reserve the right not to enter into any further correspondence.

Step 3:

We are members of the Property Redress Scheme. If you remain unhappy with the response received from us and have exhausted our complaints procedure, you can contact the Property Redress Scheme to ask them to investigate your complaint. In order to take your complaint to The Property Redress Scheme you must first have carried out the following:

• You have waited 8 weeks from the date of your written complaint to us for a response; and
• It is still within 6 months from the our last communication with you regarding this complaint

The Property Redress Scheme is a government approved Redress Scheme who resolves complaints between Members and their consumers. The complainant must have exhausted the Member’s internal complaints procedure and remain dissatisfied with the Member’s response. The Property
Redress Scheme is free to use for the complainant and further information and guidance on how to resolve complaints is available via their website.

In order to make a complaint, please contact the Property Redress Scheme directly or alternatively, visit their website and fill out a Complaints Form. The Property Redress Scheme contact details are as follows:

Website: www.theprs.co.uk
By Email: info@theprs.co.uk
By post at:
The Property Redress Scheme
Premiere House,
1st Floor
Elstree Way
Borehamwood
WD6 1JH

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