Last Thursday I attended and chaired our last Annual General Meeting for 2018, and consequently I can now start looking forward to Christmas and look back over what has been a fantastic year for our Department. We’ve had some lows (saying goodbye to Property Manager Tom Bartlett) which have been more than made up for by a great number of highs (including having Rob Humphreys cross from Accounts into Property Management, more than filling Tom’s vacant shoes) and I am very pleased that once again we are ending the year with more sites on our portfolio than we started with in January 2018… and that is not even including a number poised to become part of our happy Boydens LEM Family as of 1st of January 2019 (there are a few of those, I can tell you).

So all in all a great year: Let’s sit back and enjoy the festive period, shall we? Well, to a degree, that is. Life goes on, developments continue to require management, events still occur… we will still be here tirelessly working away in the interest of our clients right up to the wire! With this in mind, please do take a note of our office Christmas Opening Hours:

Friday December 21st: Office closing at 1pm
Monday 24th – Wednesday 26th: Office Closed
Thursday 27th – Friday 28th Open for Business
Monday 31st – Open for Business
Tuesday 1st – Office Closed
Wednesday 2nd – Open for Business

Just one of the many exciting changes we are looking at in 2019 is improvements to our out of hours cover procedure. In the meantime, if you do have a communal emergency outside of office opening hours, please contact our approved contractors to resolve this for you. You can find details of these operatives on our website.

Whilst Christmas and New Year are a time of celebration, let’s not celebrate too much and become a nuisance to our neighbours! Sadly, we do tend to see a rise in reports of antisocial behaviour over the festive period and our advice to Clients is to report serious antisocial behaviour to the police in the first instance; and to check with your local council’s Antisocial Behaviour Team in the case of lower level incidents such as noise nuisance. Please also do let us know, as the likelihood is the perpetrator will be in Breach of their Lease or Property Covenants and we will want to contact the property owner in this regard. It is always good to make as detailed notes as possible, such as times and dates of occurrences as these will be very helpful when we come to address issues. We will of course always deal with complaints anonymously.

Anyway, for now let’s focus on the positives and keep the Christmas spirit flowing! As stated before, we’ve had a fantastic year in 2018 and I am really looking forward to 2019 with all the challenges that lie in wait for us. And for now, I wish you all a restful break, a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.