A company which manages and maintains land on several housing developments in Dundee and Broughty Ferry has welcomed a move to weed out cowboy operators.
The Greenbelt Group backed the call for better regulation in the industry after Consumer Focus Scotland (CFS) invited disgruntled homeowners to reveal cases of poor service and inadequate maintenance.
CFS has welcomed the passage of the Property Factors (Scotland) Bill at Holyrood as a vital step in improving the rights of homeowners who use factoring services. The new law, taking effect in October 2012, requires property factors to be registered and introduces a system for resolving disputes.
But CFS believes the legislation doesn’t go far enough to help homeowners locked into maintenance contracts with firms that actually own the public areas on their estates. Now CFS is seeking case study evidence on problems faced by customers of land-owning management firms to help build the case for legal reform.
“Once again the Scottish Parliament has taken an important step to improve consumer protection,” said Jennifer Wallace, CFS principal policy advocate. “This legislation should make a real difference to consumers getting inadequate service from property factors.
“However, the new law will not help the thousands of consumers currently being denied the basic right of being able to choose which land management company they wish to use.
“We call on the next Scottish Government to introduce new legislation as early as possible after the election to ensure consumers can hold poorly performing land management providers to account, and remove them if desired.
“We also want homeowners currently facing this sort of problem to tell us about their experience to enable us to gather further evidence in support of a change in the law.”
Greenbelt’s head of customer services, John Beveridge, said the company has already been involved in working with CFS.
“We have been co-operating with Consumer Focus Scotland, the Office of Fair Trading, and the Scottish Government in a variety of initiatives that are being proposed for property factors and landowning management companies,” he said.
“Greenbelt welcomes the proposals for better regulation, and has contributed positively to the recent consultations that have been published.”
An independent survey has recently been carried out throughout Scotland on behalf of CFS, and Greenbelt is awaiting the outcome, he continued.
“We will continue to work with CFS to ensure consumers receive a good quality of service.”
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user SMercury98.