We believe it represents a significant opportunity to improve standards in the industry – something which we have been committed to and involved in trying to bring about – for some time.
We feel that the OFT’s recommendations highlight some of the elements needed in order to being about an improvement in the lives of everyone who lives in a managed property across Scotland.
Calls for regulation, clarification of residents’ rights of redress, provision of mediation and the reinforcement of the need for competition between property management companies are all useful.
However, we would argue that even more could and should be done to protect residents and the reputation of the industry.
We feel that more rigorous regulation is required to ensure more than mere lip service is paid to OFT’s good intentions.
Peverel Scotland has been working together with Age Concern Scotland and the Scottish Government in an attempt to bring about a Code of Conduct for the country’s retirement property management sector.
Key elements of that include the need to raise standards, particularly with regard to health and safety on developments, financial prudence, especially in independent banking and insurance, and transparency. Rather than issue fairly cursory bills to residents, we already provide them with a breakdown of accounts to enable them to understand how, why and what we charge for.
We think that ensuring property managers are properly qualified gives residents reassurance that the individuals who are working for them know what they’re doing and can give them adequate support.
All of Peverel Scotland’s property managers either have or are already working towards qualifications with bodies such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Institute of Residential Property Managers. They are constantly on hand to answer residents’ queries.
Peverel Scotland is available and willing to provide whatever insight and assistance it can to those agencies now entrusted with the responsibility of putting OFT’s recommendations into action.
Peverel Scotland manages more than 10,000 homes across Scotland, mainly in the retirement property sector. It is part of the UK’s leading property management firm The Peverel Group, which manages around 15,000 developments comprising more than 200,000 individual homes.
