Response to Bloor Deputy MD

By Nige on January 23, 2023 at 11:22 am
Type: News Category: Service Charges
Tags: Announcements | Bloor Homes

Our response to the Deputy MD of Bloor Homes, South Midlands:

Deputy MD,

Many thanks for your response. Your reference to “…our former development…” is interesting. Since Bloor is very much still responsible for the development and is likely to continue to be responsible for a good amount of time to come. For Bloor Homes, this is very much a current development in Drayton, Oxfordshire.

Unfortunately, your hope that a transfer to the Management Company (MC) is likely to be in Spring of 2023 is misguided, or perhaps just mis-informed. There has been no inspection meeting held between Bloor Homes, Vale of White Horse District Council (VWHDC) and The Dovecote Residents’ Association (RA) as yet. An inspection meeting is a pre-requisite of any potential Certificate of Practical Completion being issued and to allow the maintenance period to start. The only meetings we have held so far have been pre-inspection meetings: one in October 2021 and the last one in March 2022. As far as we are aware, we are the only ones that took notes at these meetings. We have offered to pass these notes to Bloor Homes and VWHDC to expedite the handover process. Neither has accepted this offer. Until we hold an official Inspection Meeting between Bloor Homes, VWHDC and The Dovecote Residents’ Association, with a set of notes and actions issued and agreed by all parties, handover is in limbo. So just to be clear, (as far as we am aware) no Certificate of Practical Completion has been issued as yet and the maintenance period is yet to commence

It’s also worth noting that Bloor Homes has done very few of the outstanding actions due to you waiting for over 9 months for further engagement from VWHDC. As far as we are aware, we are still waiting for a representative to be nominated by VWHDC. So there is no prospect of making any further progress on handover until we have a VWHDC representative assigned.

So, handover to the MC won’t happen before Jan 2024 at the earliest and even then, that will only happen if Bloor Homes completes all of the outstanding works to be satisfaction of VWHDC and the RA.

[we have cc’d the Bloor Adoptions Manager in to this email for awareness]

As to your position in respect to the request for a generic Deed of Variation, this is more than disappointing, but perhaps unsurprising. It is a shame that it took so long for Bloor Homes to clarify its position in this respect, considering we originally raised this in September. The fact that Bloor’s lack of action will potentially lead to residents’ hardship will be noted and made public at an appropriate time.

If you wish to learn more about the specifics of The Dovecote, the real position in respect to handover and the issues residents face, we will be more than interested in enlightening you.

Regards,

We have been liaising with our local councilor over identifying someone in VWHDC who can lead on the handover work (no one identified as yet). We will forward on this email exchange to him for awareness.