Service Charge

As discussed at the last AGM, and touched on in last Winter Newsletter, we are reviewing the level of Service Charge with the intent being to significantly increase the annual contribution to the monies held in the Reserve Fund, which currently stands at circa £80,000. With The Village now nearly 20 years old it is starting to show some signs of age and requires a greater level of maintenance and repairs.

In 2019 we needed to undertake a significant piece of repair work to the boundary wall and last year we undertook groundwork repairs in Brigade Place, Weston Avenue and at the main entrance in addition to many other smaller works. This year we will be restricting our maintenance expenditure where we can, but we also have to ensure we undertake essential work as and when the need arises. An example is the tree work and the gravelled area in Gowrie Place as covered elsewhere in the newsletter.

In light of the potential financial impact Covid may have had on residents we took the decision last year to withhold increasing the 2021 service charge beyond that required to manage the annual expenditure. We feel however that from 2022 we will need to start increasing the funding into our Reserve Fund which will mean increasing the annual Service Charge.

At the present time we are estimating the costs of future essential works, as best we can, in order to estimate the level of increase required to the service charge. As in previous years we will share our proposal for the 2022 budget and Reserve Fund contribution ahead of the AGM in November but in the meantime, we wanted to continue to be open and upfront with residents of the need to increase the Service Charges in 2022.