When you bought your house on Herdwick Gate or Herdwick Fold presumably you were told that one day you would be paying a monthly charge to cover the cost of maintaining our Public Open Spaces (POS).

POS includes communal grassed areas, trees, shrubs, ground coverings (such as tree bark), playgrounds, the Breedon gravel footpaths, sub-soil drainage systems and attenuation basins.

Apparently it’s common on new developments for local councils to avoid taking responsibility by pushing it back to the new residents to pay - on top of their council tax.  Thanks for that WCC!

So how much is it, how does it work and why aren’t we paying already?

Current situation

Herdwick Gate & Herdwick Fold are managed separately in terms of maintenance and will have separate maintenance contracts.  But what follows applies equally to both.

Right now most residents are currently paying nothing for the maintenance of our POS.  That’s because until our developments are officially signed off with all works completed Taylor Wimpey remain responsible for this work and they stand the cost.

The only exceptions we have heard about are from residents who are in Assisted Housing - either shared ownership or renting from a housing association.  For some at least, it appears that part of the regular payment they make includes an element that notionally covers the POS maintenance charge.

So a resident may be paying their housing association a contribution towards POS maintenance but the housing association is not paying anything yet to a management company.  It’s hard to understand how this can be justified.  (If you’re in Assisted Housing you might want to check if you are paying a contribution towards POS maintenance, and if so it might be worth asking where that money is going). 

Sign off and POS transfer of title

When all construction and landscaping works are completed and each development is finally signed off, the title to the POS land will be transferred from Taylor Wimpey to Trinity (Estates) Property Management Ltd.

At this point Trinity become legal owners of the land and are responsible for its upkeep (including the attenuation basins).  They must maintain the POS in accordance with a published schedule and ensure that suitably qualified people are employed to carry out the work to the required standards.  At the appropriate time the Residents Association will approach Trinity and seek to have representation on the committees responsible for organising and managing the work on both developments.

How much will we pay?

Trinity must prepare an annual budget showing expected costs, which will include their own fee for managing the work.  The total cost is divided by the number of property owners and this translates to a charge which most of us will pay by monthly direct debit. 

Back in 2022 the cost for Herdwick Fold was said to be around £20 per month.  Herdwick Gate is probably a similar amount.  But as already mentioned, most people are paying nothing yet.  And we may not pay anything for quite some time.  Here’s why.

Section 106 and the Seven Year Clause

Taylor Wimpey pay all maintenance costs until the development is signed off as finished.  We don’t know precisely when this will be but Herdwick Gate appears to be closer to the finishing line than Herdwick Fold.

But even when that transfer of ownership to Trinity takes place we still may not have to pay.  And that’s because of something called a Section 106 agreement.

An S106 agreement is a legal document that sets out a number of terms and conditions agreed by the landowner, construction company and the local council when planning permission is being sought for a new development.  Within in it are clauses where the parties undertake to do specific things.

One such clause that appears in the Section 106 agreements for both Herdwick Gate and Herdwick Fold says that Taylor Wimpey will make a payment to Trinity “to fund the maintenance for a period of 7 years”.  (See image for Herdwick Gate).

However when the RA Committee met with Taylor Wimpey recently it was clear that they are now not happy with this “7 year clause" in the S106 document, which the company signed during the planning application process.  There is some kind of internal discussion going on about it.

The conclusion we draw is that they may be looking for a way to wriggle out of this legally binding agreement.  Our understanding is that any request to vary the clauses in a S106 document would require the consent of all parties, and that includes Stratford District Council (SDC).

Back in July 2024 we wrote to SDC and asked them to confirm the S106 documents are in force and we specifically asked about the “7 year clause".  We have heard nothing back.  So on 21st October 2024 we chased them up and we await their reply.  If any resident has contacts within SDC that may help to speed up their response please do get in touch.

This is a subject that the RA Committee has on its radar.  We will update you when we have more.

Adoption of roads and footpaths

A final point on asphalt roads and footpaths.  These will be adopted by WCC in due course so our maintenance agreement does not cover these.

UPDATE 6th November 2024: In our original article we said that private (bricked) roadways are not going to be adopted.  We also said that they would not be covered by Trinity maintenance.  This was based on our reading of a management proposal document from Trinity about Herdwick Fold dated 17th October 2018.

Since we published this report residents on Herdwick Gate have shown us the equivalent Trinity document for their development.  It clearly shows that private roads are covered by the maintenance agreement.

We looked in to the reason for this difference.  It turns out that with the Herdwick Gate development these private roadways are not owned by individual property owners.  They are part of the commonly owned land.  Whereas on the Herdwick Fold development people living in properties adjacent to private roadways actually own the section that is in front of their home.  An example from NIchols Court is shown here.  You can see the property boundary, marked by a red line includes a section of private road.

So in summary, private roadways on Herdwick Gate are covered by the Trinity maintenance agreement and the ones on Herdwick Fold are not.  Sorry for any confusion caused by our original article.

If you have any comments or questions about this news article please feel free to get in touch.  Contact Us.

 

HGHF-RA Committee

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