Plant rooms
Communal heating, pumps, lifts and smoke ventilation, each with its own contractor, contract and emergency number, kept on one register.
Case study · Putney, SW15
A 155-unit mixed-use estate in Putney.
Several buildings on one estate, sharing a plant room, underground parking, a gym and a concierge, with shops and offices at street level. It is a higher-risk building under the Building Safety Act, and its external walls are the subject of a Building Safety Fund application.
155
Units
147
Flats
8
Commercial units
2023
In our care since January
Shared facilities, shared fairly
The plant room, the car park, the gym and the concierge serve the whole estate, but not every flat uses every one of them. A resident without a parking space should not be paying for the car park barrier, and a shop at street level should not be paying for the lifts. The estate’s costs are split across separate service charge schedules, and each leaseholder pays the share their lease sets for each one.
We budget, account and report schedule by schedule, so the directors can see what each facility costs, who pays for it and whether it came in on budget. The year-end accounts are prepared the same way, and each leaseholder’s statement shows their share of every schedule, not a single figure nobody can check.
The plant room and the contracts behind it
A building of this size runs on plant: communal heating from a shared plant room, water pumps, lifts, fire alarm, smoke ventilation, fire curtains, dry risers and car park gates. At the Putney estate that is fifteen systems and more than twenty contractors. Each has its own maintenance contract and its own emergency number, and we keep a register of who looks after which system, so an out-of-hours call reaches the right engineer the first time and contract renewals come to the directors with the costs compared.
Homes above shops
Mixed use brings its own lease terms and its own questions: which costs the commercial tenants share, what they insure themselves, and how their deliveries and opening hours sit alongside the residents. We apportion accordingly and keep the commercial occupiers on the same records as everybody else, so a question about a shopfront is answered as quickly as one about a flat.
Building safety: the regulator and the fund
At over 18 metres the estate is a higher-risk building, which puts it within the Building Safety Regulator’s regime. That means records that are kept up to date rather than assembled when someone asks, fire safety checks done and logged on schedule, and information collected from residents who may need help to leave the building in an emergency.
Its external walls have been assessed, and the building is the subject of an application to the government’s Building Safety Fund. We handle the leaseholder side of that: keeping residents informed, answering questions from buyers’ solicitors, and making sure a sale is not held up by missing paperwork.
At this building
The complications we handle here.
Car parks
Underground parking with its own schedule, so the spaces are paid for by the people who hold them, and the gates, barriers and ventilation are maintained on contract.
Gyms and concierge
Shared facilities budgeted, maintained and reported on separately, so directors can see what they cost and residents can see what they pay for.
Mixed use
Shops and offices below flats, with the costs split so commercial and residential occupiers each pay what their leases say.
Cladding and external walls
Fire risk appraisals of the external walls and EWS1 forms on file, and ready answers for buyers’ solicitors and lenders.
The Building Safety Regulator
Higher-risk buildings over 18 metres, with fire safety records kept current and information gathered from residents who need it.
The Building Safety Fund
The leaseholder side of a fund application: keeping residents informed and making sure a sale is not held up by the paperwork.
Behind the scenes
Run on BalanceBuddy.
- Service charges split schedule by schedule — six at the Putney estate, two in Brentford — with every leaseholder’s share worked from their lease.
- Budgets, budget-versus-actual reports and year-end accounts from one ledger, so the figures directors see during the year are the ones in the accounts.
- A register of who maintains each system on each building, with the emergency number to ring out of hours.
- Fire safety checks recorded on site, with failed checks raised as defects and followed up until they are closed.
- Each leaseholder’s documents in their own secure vault rather than sent as attachments.
- Reports for directors on what residents have raised and how quickly it was answered.
Residents reach us through the Gena Go app. See how the two fit together on the large block management page.
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