Looking after our estates and neighbourhoods
A clean, safe and well-maintained home and neighbourhood is important and creates a positive environment to live in.
This page explains how we manage our estates and neighbourhoods, including gardening and trees, cleaning, fire safety, fly tipping, parking and CCTV.
For more information, please read our Estate and Neighbourhood Management Policy or get in touch by emailing enquiries@syha.co.uk or call 0800 1380 380
We inspect all our larger estates, and communal areas where customers pay a service charge, to make sure they are clean, tidy and well maintained. The majority are visited every three to six months.
- SYHA estates are areas where SYHA own and manage a significant number of properties.
- Neighbourhoods are the immediate surroundings where our customers live. SYHA may have less control over the external environment, and we are likely to work in partnership with the Local Authority in these areas.
- Communal areas are land near our properties including walkways, parking bays and shared grounds. Internal communal areas include hallways, landings and stairwells.
On some estates and blocks, external management companies are responsible for cleaning and maintaining communal areas. If this is the case, you will see this on your service charge statement as ‘management company costs’. We monitor these companies to ensure they are performing well.
If you live in a supported housing scheme, not all of the following information will apply to you. If you have any questions, please contact your key worker or Project Lead.
Gardening and landscaping
We cut back grass and shrubbery in our estates and communal areas, and this is normally funded by your service charges.
From April to October, grass cuts will be carried out at least every two weeks. From November to March, we will carry out one visit per month. All shrub beds and hedges will be cut back twice a year.
Before completing any gardening and landscaping work, we will remove weeds, waste and litter.
Individual gardens are customers’ responsibility. Additional help may be available to customers who have a vulnerability and are unable to look after their garden.
Trees
Trees on communal land are surveyed as part of our routine inspections. If a tree is dangerous, dying or diseased, or where there is a danger to human life or a tree is causing structural damage, we will arrange for remedial works to be completed. We will aim to inspect any tree that is considered dangerous within one working day.
Trees growing in customers’ own gardens are generally their responsibility to maintain. If you tell us that a tree in your garden is dead, dying or dangerous, we may visit for an inspection. We will talk to you about what we have found and if any works are required. If necessary, we will arrange for contractors to carry out the works and you may be charged for this.
If we remove a tree from a communal area, we will inform any customers that are affected.
If we need to work on more than one tree on an estate, we may consult with customers that are affected. This will be an opportunity to have your say about the proposed works.
Fire safety in communal areas
You can not store any items in communal areas in our general needs blocks. This minimises the risk of fire, and enables easy access to escape in the event of a fire. If a customer leaves an item in a communal space, they will have 14 days to remove it. After this time, SYHA will remove it and store high value items for three months.
We ask that all internal areas are kept clean and tidy.
Please do not dump items of rubbish, which includes general household rubbish, furniture and white goods, in communal areas. Do not wedge open any internal doors or communal entrance doors.
Cleaning communal spaces
We make sure that communal hallways, entrance areas, stairs, landings and windows are cleaned regularly. At some supported and extra-care homes, you will also pay for housekeeping services.
Fly tipping
We will work with Local Authorities to investigate all incidents of illegal dumping of bulky items. We aim to remove fly tipping within five working days.
If there is a significant risk to health and safety, we will aim to remove the rubbish within 48 hours of it being reported.
Graffiti
We will investigate all reports of vandalism to our communal areas, and aim to remove graffiti within five working days following it being reported. If any graffiti is of a sexual, racist or other offensive nature we will aim to remove it within one working day.
Parking
To help our estates stay safe and look their best, we ask our customers to:
- Park considerately in parking and garage areas.
- Not run any car repair or sales business from our parking areas, garage areas or green areas.
- Park in your dedicated parking space, if you have one.
- Not park unroadworthy cars in communal parking spaces or on SYHA land.
CCTV and video doorbells
You can use CCTV or video doorbells to keep you and your home safe from crime or anti-social behaviour. If you are installing CCTV around your home then SYHA will need to give you permission to do this. However, you don’t need to ask our permission to install a video doorbell camera.
It is important to consider other people’s privacy when installing CCTV or a video doorbell. Please think about:
- Where you can position the CCTV to minimise intrusion on others.
- Whether the range of the camera includes other neighbours’ gardens or pavements – if it does, consider changing the range of the cameras so it only captures what it needs to.
Ensure that you are really clear to those around you when installing your CCTV system. You can do this by:
- informing your neighbour(s) about your system
- putting up a notice informing people that recording is taking place
- make sure that the information is not used for any other purpose than protecting your home
- being aware of individuals’ data protection rights.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates and enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). If your CCTV system or doorbell captures images of people outside the boundary of your private domestic property – for example, from neighbours’ homes or gardens, shared spaces such as corridors, or from public areas – then the GDPR and the DPA will apply to you.
There is more information about domestic CCTV on the GOV.UK website.
SYHA will direct our customers towards the ICO if we believe there are GDPR/DPA breaches. We will only take action where people are using their CCTV to intentionally harass and intimidate others, and this will be investigated under our Anti-social Behaviour and Harassment Policy. We want everyone to feel safe in their homes without fear of harassment or intimidation.
