The home of Ormsby (Freehold) Ltd  

The lease places responsibility for the regular cleaning of windows on individual lessees. However, the Working at Height Regulations 2005 made under the Health & safety Act 1974 have made it all but impossible for most lessees to satisfactorily fulfil this covenant of their lease. As a result, the Company let a commercial contract in 2007 to have all of the exterior windows of Ormsby cleaned by a Health & Safety compliant pole fed system which worked well. Although the Company took on this responsibility, the lease still held individual lessees responsible for window cleaning and, strictly speaking therefore, the service charge should not have been used to pay for it and the Company could have been liable to legal and/or accounting challenge.

The ultimate solution would have been to vary the lease in order to transfer the responsibility for window cleaning to the lessor but the Company Solicitor at the time advised that this would be disproportionately expensive. The solution recommended was for each lessee to formally request the Company to arrange to have their windows cleaned under the contract used for cleaning the communal windows and following consultation in January 2009 all 24 lessees opted in favour of this solution. A window cleaning charge is now billed and collected at the same time as the half-yearly service charge and it was agreed that the amount involved would be £40 per flat per year (i.e. £20 each half year). It was necessary for each lessee to sign an undertaking with the Company covering this arrangement and a fresh agreement is required whenever ownership of the flat changes.