Our Services

• Rent
• Tenancy Services
• Getting Involved
• Leaseholder Services
  • Introduction
    • Your Responsibilities
    • Our Responsibilities
    • Landlord Permission
  • Types of Lease
  • Leaseholders FAQ's
  • Leaseholder Forum
  • Leasehold Service Charge
  • Major Repairs and Improvements
  • Money Matters
  • Service Charge Disputes
  • Getting Involved
  • Rights for Leaseholders
  • How to Bid for Works
  • Gas Servicing
  • Leaseholders Handbook
  • Contact us
• Antisocial Behaviour
• Decent Homes
• Repairs

Your Responsibilities

Your responsibilities are to;

• Pay your ground rent, buildings insurance and service charges promptly and regularly.
• Maintain, decorate and repair all parts of your home including all services used solely by your property.
• Have any gas appliances in your home checked and serviced every year.
• Send us a copy of your gas maintenance certificate every year.
• Allow us into your home to carry out repairs you have not done (we will then charge you for doing any work).
• Make your own arrangements to insure the contents of your home
• Allow us into your home so that we can check the condition of the property.
• Allow us into your home to carry out work on parts that provide services to other properties in the block such as shared heating systems.
• Pay all taxes and charges due on the property.
• Not cause a nuisance or annoyance to your neighbours, their family or visitors.
• Not to harass or offend others, including our staff, on grounds of race, ethnic origin, religion, sex, or sexual orientation or disability.
• Only use the property as a place to live, not work.
• Provide notice to us in writing (within 21 days) of details of any change in lease ownership, or if you sub-let the property.
• Not do anything that would make the insurers refuse to pay out on any claim which we might want to make.
• Not make any alterations or additions to your home without our written permission.
• Not to carry out any work that would require planning permission from the Council. To check whether your proposed works require planning permission please contact the Duty Planning Officer on 020 8496 3000 or email dcmail@walthamforest.gov.uk.
• Not to let oil, grease, refuse or harmful substances leak into drains or sewers.

We will ask for access to your home in circumstances where we need to check the condition of the property and fixtures and fittings or where you have failed to carry out your repair responsibilities.

Your responsibility for repairs

You are responsible for maintaining anything inside your flat and anything that only serves your flat, including the following.

• The surface of the floors in the flat above the joists or other supporting floor structure, and the surface of the floor of the balcony, if you have one.
• The ceiling of the flat up to, but not including, the joists or other supporting floor structure or beams the ceiling is attached to.
• The surfaces of all walls, windows and doors inside your flat, the glass in your windows and your front door and frame.
• All pipes and cables and so on, laid in any part of the block that serve only your flat.

Please note that if there is any loft space above your flat, it belongs to the Council. If you need access to the loft space to repair pipes for example, you must get our permission first. You must not store anything in the loft space.

Please don’t install laminate flooring to your flat without first putting down very good sound insulation. If you don’t use sufficient sound insulation even normal every-day living noises such as walking around could disturb neighbours in flats below yours. This could be considered as nuisance behaviour under the lease and could result in us asking you to either remove or take up and relay the laminate flooring with satisfactory sound insulation.

If your property was sold on a ‘green lease’ the lease does not specify who is responsible for window frames, so we allow leaseholders of these properties to take responsibility for them. We will only repair, maintain or replace windows to green lease properties at the leaseholders expense, if the leaseholder fails to do so.