Contract Maintenance

Depending on your development you may have the need for a cleaning company or gardening contractor or maybe both. In most cases they may well be the company that was appointed by the developer and their costs or services have never been looked at. So what can you do to ensure the best value for money? And how do you know that they are performing?

It is really important that you have a suitable company carrying out the cleaning or gardening on a development. You will often find that the initial companies hired by developers, freeholders or managing agents are “property maintenance” companies. They have no specified area of expertise and they offer a convenient one stop shop for all maintenance needs. My advice would be to hire an expert cleaning company and an expert gardening company, basically an expert contractor for each contract you require.
I also recommend you look for local companies, you often get a better price, better service and they usually take more pride in their work.

However don’t just go out into the market and pick any company. In order to get the best service for your money you need to be smart in your approach. Take the time to put together a specification of exactly what you expect the contractor to carry out. Be as specific as possible in terms of jobs and frequency. Not only will this ensure they are aware of what you expect, it also ensures that all the quotes you receive will be like for like and you will know exactly what to measure the chosen contractors performance against.
Once you have your specification it’s time to get some quotes in. If you can get any recommendations or references now is the time. Otherwise look for some local companies who have decent reputations. It is not necessary but it will always help if you can meet the contractors on the development to show them the areas you need maintenance on. At the very least I suggest you provide a site plan.



Once you have your tenders in, pick the best one, remembering that lowest cost will not always get you the best service. It’s really important that when entering into any contract you ensure that the limits of section 20 (qualifying long term agreements) are not broken. This would be where you were entering a contract that is longer than 1 year and will cost any leaseholder more than £100. In any circumstance my advice would be to enter a monthly rolling contract and ensure that the specification is clearly detailed in the contract.
Once you have appointed the contractor it is really important to monitor their service. With any luck you’ll find a good contractor who will manage themselves. I would however always suggest that you have quality checks in place. The more of the following you can implement the better,

• Get your managing agent to carry out regular site visits
• Have a signing in sheet at the development
• Ensure all residents have a copy of the specification
• Ask the contractor to provide weekly updates to yourself or your agent
• Walk the development regularly with the contractor

If you follow the above steps you should have a well maintained development and a well-managed contractor.

When assessing a maintenance contractor’s performance it is important to note that even if they do a fantastic job the development will gradually start to look worse. It is important that you have a backup of cyclical works to compliment the maintenance. These would be works such as decorating and planting.

In the event that a contractor starts to underperform I suggest you give them a time period within which to improve, negotiate a reduction in payment in line with the specification items missed (this is why it is important to detail the spec in the contract) and if necessary terminate them from the contract and then start the tender process again.