The Concierge service has around 160 staff working from 57 sites, delivering a service to approximately 5,800 tenants and leaseholders living in flats across the city as and when required.

There are two types of Concierge:

• 24 hour sites that have lodges where staff are on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (over two thirds of our residents benefiting from this type of service)
• resident sites that have staff who work 37 hour week Monday to Saturday.

All sites are supported by day shift staff and there is also 24 hour access to the Concierge service on freephone 08000 731 389.

The Concierge service includes:

• Safety and Security: monitoring of a citywide CCTV system that helps to make our communities safer places to live, door access, monitoring of alarms, daily building inspections of shared areas, receptions duties
• Building Cleaning: providing cleaning services or monitoring of building cleaning services
• Good Neighbour Role: accepting parcels, retaining keys, reporting repairs, changing light bulbs, general assistance, help with furniture, bulky rubbish collection.

The aim of the service is to:

• Provider safer homes for residents
• Protect properties from loss and damage
• Maintain high standards of property care
• Maintain the demand for properties and the stability of the local neighbourhoods
• Provide customers with easy access to staff
• Be a ‘good neighbour’ to council tenants and leaseholders.

There are two levels of charge with a lower rate being charged for the resident concierge service.

Following a review of the service it was recognised that Leaseholders were not paying enough per year to cover the cost of the use of the Concierge service. The decision was taken to introduce a staged increase in service charges over a three year period for the concierge service. You were informed of the charges applicable to you in a letter dated 8 March 2006.  

Following the review of the Concierge Service, YHN Board recognised that ground floor flats do not receive the same level of service from the Concierge but they can still use this service if they want to. They made a decision to reduce the charge paid by ground floor leaseholders by 25% of the full cost.

However since then, we have had to reinstate the full charge to all leaseholders regardless of where their flat is located and if they use this service or not. This was following the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal case that was held at St Ann’s Close. The Tribunal ruled that we should not have reduced this charge as it was against the terms of the lease.

Leaseholders are governed by the terms of the lease and can not opt out of paying for the Concierge. The lease states that if the service is available then the leaseholder has to pay an equal share of the cost of this service.

For more information on the Concierge service, including cleaning standards and cleaning schedules and contact details, please visit the Concierge section of the website.