Blocks, estates and common parts.

Blocks are a different job

A mansion block in Kensington, a converted Georgian terrace in Islington run by a right-to-manage company, a 1930s estate in Pimlico: the brick and stone questions are the same, but the process is not. The firm has to work with your consultation timetable, your access licences, your leaseholders and your surveyor's specification, and give you paperwork that stands up at a tribunal.

Consultation

Under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, qualifying works that will cost any one leaseholder more than £250 need formal consultation before they are let, or the recoverable amount is capped at £250 per leaseholder. External cleaning and repointing of a block nearly always crosses that line. The firm cannot run the consultation for you, but it can give you a specification and an estimate that fit the notice of intention and the statement of estimates.

What the firm should produce

1. A survey of the elevations, with photographs, marking soiling, failed joints, spalled brick, cracked sills and anything structural to refer to a surveyor.
2. A method statement: cleaning system, temperature and pressure, chemicals, run-off containment, mortar specification, protection of windows and ironwork.
3. Trial patches, photographed, for the leaseholder pack and, where it applies, the conservation officer.
4. Access: scaffold or mast climber, licences, pavement and parking suspensions, hoarding, each as a separate line so they can be compared.
5. A programme with working hours that respect residents, and a named site contact.

Surveyors and architects

If you are specifying rather than managing, the firm can price against your specification or help you write it, including trial patches to establish the method before tender. Where a listed building is involved, the method statement and samples can go to the conservation officer with the consent application.

Freeholders and residents' companies

If you own the freehold through a residents' company, you are the client and the landlord at once. The same consultation rules apply. The simplest path is one specialist firm, one survey, one specification, and the leaseholders shown the trial patch photographs before the notice goes out.