GW Maintenance ChargesAll Garden Wood properties are required to pay an annual maintenance charge. This money is used to maintain the areas of the estate owned by you, the shareholders. This annual payment is detailed in the deeds of your property.
The charge is collected in July and must be paid by the 31st of December. The Directors try to keep the charge to a minimum yet still maintain the estate in a reasonable condition. Our overheads are very low and most of the charge is spent on maintaining the grass areas and the many trees.
At the 2022 AGM residents agreed to an increase in the maintenance charge. It was last increased in 2017. It was also agreed that we would move to using Direct Debit as the preferred method of payment. DD’s are the most cost effective way of collecting the charge. Once set up Direct Debit payments are easier and more cost effective than Standing Orders. In the past we could not use DDs but the Go Cardless system has allowed us to move over this method of payment and it has become the popular method of payment.
From 2023 the maintenance charge will be £80. This will be collected on the 1st of July. This is reduced to £65 if you pay by DD. There is no reduction for SO’s. For payments made after the 31st of December the charge is £150. This reflects the disproportionate cost of collecting these late payments.
Some residents currently pay by Standing Order. If you wish to continue with this method of payment you will need to advise your bank of the increased charge of £80. Some residents have not done this and have ended up paying the wrong amount. This causes extra work for you and us. We would encourage you to cancel your Standing Order and set up a Direct Debit. This will save you £15 a year and reduce our admin work.
We are using a system called ‘Go Cardless’ to collect DD payments. This is a safe and secure method and is underwritten by the banks. You will need an email address to pay by DD.
We have attached a direct link for you to access and apply for payment via
GoCardless https://pay.gocardless.com/AL0005H1BQJH43You may prefer to contact us via email for more details of paying by DD or any other method.
You can also pay by cheque or bank transfer but please remember to pay before the 31st December to avoid the higher charge.
Updated Feb 2025
Why Garden Wood Residents Pay Maintenance Charges.
We are occasionally asked by new residents why they have to pay maintenance charges. The charges are referred to in the deeds of your property. You may find the notes below helpful.
Management charges are more often associated with leasehold properties but there has been a lot of media coverage recently about estate management charges on freehold properties. So much in fact that the government has commissioned a report on the subject. Many new build estates are charging residents high maintenance charges often with no accountability. This sometimes happens when the local authority refuse to take over the management of public areas and other utilities from the developers.
This is commonly called the Private Estates Model and it has been on the increase. There are three versions of this model.
One is in which the management company is set up by and answerable to the developers. They have no accountability to homeowners who have to pay their charges and are legally obliged to do so even though they have no input to them.
The second version is the Embedded Maintenance Company (EMC) Model. The EMC owns the land maintained and the homeowners are legally obliged to pay the company maintenance charges but as above, have no input to them.
In the third version again the developers set up a management company. When the estate is completed, the developers pass the ownership of the company to the homeowners who become shareholders. The homeowners are still legally obliged to pay the maintenance charge but control the company and hence the charges. This type of company is known as a Residents Management Company (RMC). Garden Wood is such a company. For the RMC model to work requires the homeowners to be actively involved in the management of the company though sometimes the homeowners employ an external management company but they still have overall control.
As Garden Wood homeowners we are all shareholders in our maintenance company. We can decide to spend as much or as little as we want on maintaining our estate.
All our Directors are residents and receive no renumeration. This means there are no management fees. On many managed estates, the management fees make up a significant part of the annual charge.
I hope you find the above notes helpful.
John Shead
GW Director
January 2025