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PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
HOW PROFESSIONAL
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
COULD SAVE YOU
THOUSANDS
Catherine Affleck, operations director and head of
property management at Bradley Hall discusses
compliance in her specialism of property management.
I think we can all agree, as landlords
and as property and facilities managers and even as tenants to some degree, that
property management compliance can be
an absolute chore!
Of course, we all understand its
importance and the potentially dire
implications of when things don’t go to
plan - but that doesn’t make it an any
more palatable subject to any of us.
Compliance is the red tape we all must
wade through to facilitate our true
property intentions. There will never be
anything appealing about legionella
testing, a health and safety risk
assessment is unlikely to get hearts racing,
but the devil is in the detail and these are
the documents which will protect you
should things ever go wrong.
So, should a landlord ever just wing it
and hope for the best? In a word, no!
If the worst-case scenario fear of
having a tenant fatality in their premises
isn’t sucient incentive, then the hefty
penalties for non-compliance might be
enough to make those landlords who
might allow their safety standards to slip
to save a couple of hundred pounds a
year think twice.
In Sheeld an amateur landlord was
ned £17,000 for failure to provide a gas
safety certicate, a London landlord was
ned £214,000 for a series of electrical
and re safety breaches across their
property portfolio and, in Brighton, a
landlord who failed to suitably maintain
re escapes and equipment was ned
£43,680.
I don’t believe there are any landlords
out there who genuinely don’t care about
their tenants’ safety and welfare, and I’ve
certainly been lucky enough not to come
across any in my time in property
management. For those who do drop the
ball it is sometimes down to inexperience
as a landlord, not understanding their
obligations, perceived restrictive cost
implications or just a simple and naïve
belief that “something bad won’t happen
to me”.
What do you need to do as a landlord?
Before letting your property you’ll need
an EPC, a gas safety certicate which is
ideally accompanied by a boiler service, a
PAT testing certicate for any landlord
owned electrical items, a re alarm and a
carbon monoxide alarm. It’s also best
practice to have a ve yearly electrical
xed wiring test certicate. There are
further considerations if you own a block
of residential properties, particularly
where there are shared services, but
we’re here to advise you further in that
case.
At Bradley Hall we pride ourselves on
the service we provide to our landlords
and tenants. Tenant welfare is a major
priority and where we have happy tenants
paying their rent, we have happy
investment clients. We understand that
our landlords have other things to think
about, compliance is second nature to us,
we deal with it day in day out with our
team of trusted approved contractors.
MEET THE BRADLEY HALL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT TEAM
Catherine Aeck
Operations Director and
Head of Property Management
0191 232 8080
78
Rachel Roberts
Chartered Surveyor
0191 232 8080
Joseph I'Anson
Chartered Surveyor
0191 232 8080
Laura Walker
Estate Management Surveyor
0191 232 8080
Geo Davis
Financial Director
0191 232 8080
PORTFOLIO MAGAZINE
