Grounds maintenance

Many of the areas around our properties have communal green space which the whole community can enjoy and benefit from.

We maintain these areas all year round by cutting the grass, pruning shrubs, and keeping the weeds under control, and the cost is shared between tenants, private owners who bought their home from us after 2003 and leaseholders who live in the neighbourhood. The service is delivered on our behalf by Centigen Facilities Management.

The Winter programme

Our team will visit each of our communal areas at least once during the winter period. On these visits we will:

• Spray for weeds on communal hard standing areas, garage sites, and parking spaces.
• If needed, we’ll scrub moss off any communal pathways and parking areas that we own.
• Clear overgrowth on communal pathways and remove all green waste.
• Tidy up all hedges and shrubs.
• Cut back and remove all overhanging trees that obstruct pathways or that block visibility on road junctions.
• Tidy up the communal flower beds at our Home Plus sites.

Our summer grass cutting programme will start again in March.

If you have any questions about the service you receive, please speak to your Neighbourhood Housing Advisor.

The Summer programme

The level of grass-cutting service we provide can vary in each area. Most areas will receive a ‘standard cut’, but we also provide an ‘enhanced cut‘ and collect service for tenants living in our HomePlus properties. These tenants pay an additional fee for this service. 

There are also some areas that receive a ‘reduced cut‘. These are mainly neighbourhoods where there are more private home owners who do not contribute to cost of maintaining these areas. These are homeowners that purchased their home before 2003, when we took ownership of the land from the Forest of Dean District Council. 

We don’t believe it’s fair to expect our tenants to pay all of the costs for a full grounds maintenance service in the areas where private owners do not contribute, so we provide a reduced cut service in these neighbourhoods.  

You can find more information on the types of cut we provide below:

• Standard cut:  Grass is cut every two weeks during the summer season, with the first four and last three cuts being collected. The others have grass cuttings left in place to release 30% of the nutrients required by the lawn back into it, helping to keep moisture in the soil, and creating a healthier lawn.
• HomePlus residents pay extra for an enhanced cut. For this service, the grass is cut and collected every two weeks during the summer season.
• Reduced cut: Areas where our homes are out-numbered by home-owners (who do not contribute towards the cost of the service) receive a ‘reduced cut-and-drop’ four times a year. Again the cuttings are left in place during the rest of the season to release nutrients back into the grassed areas, helping to keep moisture in the soil and creating a healthier lawn. Due to the less frequent cutting the grass is longer and more visible than in the areas we cut more frequently.

Following feedback from tenants, we published our cutting schedules for the 2024 cutting season. We set these each year to provide an overview of the service. They are subject to change, as the schedules can be impacted by weather and other unforeseen circumstances, but they provide an overview of when we expect the team to be in each area.  

You can view the schedules and the lates updates on our service here: Summer 2024 grass cutting schedules