  Welcome to the March Edition of the Leasehold Newsletter
This is the first leaseholders email bulletin where we keep you up to date with news from the leasehold team, useful information, and our plans for the coming months.
If you have any ideas for future bulletins, then please do contact us – our details are at the end of this newsletter.
Service charges
It’s the time of year where we are busy preparing your individual service charge statements, which you will receive by the end of March/ beginning of April.
We understand that the cost-of-living crisis is still very real for some of our customers, and we have worked hard to keep any increases to a minimum. Some of you may see a reduction in charges for some services, whilst others we have had to increase.
We have also needed to add two new charges that we can no longer absorb. These are small charges for CCTV and for our door entry (fob) systems. These two services that need regular maintenance to help keep you and your property safe. If you notice that these are not working correctly, you can contact our repairs helpline who can arrange for an engineer to visit.
To help you budget, we are including a direct debit mandate for you to complete if you choose to pay by 12 interest free instalments – there is no longer a need to contact us if you wish to pay by this method, simply return the form in your service charge pack when you receive it, and we will let you know when it’s set up. The Council also has a range of advice for everyone on their cost-of-living web pages.
If you still have an amount outstanding from previous years’ service charges, please do get in touch and we can discuss how this can be repaid alongside the current years. If you are already paying these off longer than March 2024, please do not cancel the direct debit – this will need to run alongside this year’s amounts.
Communal Areas and Rough sleepers
There have recently been some instances where both tenants and leaseholders have reported faults with our door entry systems. We do class these as an urgent repair for your safety, but on occasions meant that people have been using the communal areas as a dry area to sleep in. If you do notice any rough sleepers in your area, you can easily report these to an organisation called StreetLink, who have a dedicated team of outreach workers who will go the location and offer help and support to anyone in need. This can be used for any people across the City.
Coming Soon…..
As part of our keeping in touch strategy, we are always keen to hear your thoughts and understand what’s important to you. Included in the next newsletter, there will be link to a questionnaire to help us understand what you would like to see from the Leasehold Team and suggestions on how we can improve. Watch this space!
And finally…..
We have recently changed our mailing address, and are in the process of updating our standard letters. If you do need to contact us, our details are below:
Leasehold Services – leaseholdservice@sheffield.gov.uk Tel: 0114 2734468
Postal address: Leasehold Services, Sheffield City Council, PO BOX 5967, Sheffield, S2 9GH
Repairs – To be reported directly to the call centre on Tel: 0114 273 5555
Block cleaning requests – Tel: 0114 2930000 and ask for Estate Services for your local area office.
Lease Advisory Service - www.lease-advice.org
Your feedback is always appreciated, so if you have any comment, please do let us know, and watch out for the survey in the next edition!
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