We know how important it is for your home and wider scheme to be safe, clean and well maintained. To help this happen, you pay service charges for the services delivered around your home.
We’re planning to introduce new services to enhance your experience and make sure your home continues to meet your needs.
FAQs
What new services are you adding?
We’re introducing services for pest control, provision for tree surgery, and refuse disposal.
Why are you adding them now?
We want to make sure our services and the costs associated are distributed fairly and transparently between those who receive them. Doing this also helps customers to budget and avoid unexpected costs when services are delivered.
Some schemes already receive these services, but currently we’re not always able to recover this. For example, in 2025/26 we spent over £500,000 on fly tipping and rubbish removal. This has a huge impact on the services we can provide for our customers.
We hope by introducing these to service charges, we can continue to deliver our services in a fair and consistent way.
Does this impact everyone?
Yes, we’ll be introducing these extra services to everyone. There are some tenancy agreements that need to be reviewed to allow us to do this, and we’ll be contacting those customers separately to let them know our plans.
What do the services cover?
The services we’re introducing are needed to keep you and your home safe. They include:
- Pest control: The removal of pests such as mice, squirrels or wasps within communal spaces and areas subject to our pest control policy.
- Provision for tree surgery: Assessing the condition and safety of trees across schemes. Pruning, removal, or other maintenance required to prevent hazards and comply with safety standards.
- Refuse disposal: Fly tipping and bulk item removal, which is split between all properties at the scheme, unless we are provided with evidence of the person/people responsible for the fly tipping.
How much will each service cost?
At this point, we can’t say as we know that each scheme is different and requires different services. Once we’ve reviewed all of the tenancy agreements, we’ll be in touch to provide more information about the changes specific to your scheme and how this will impact you. We want to assure you, that you will only ever be asked to contribute where money is spent to deliver these services on your scheme.
Under the terms of your tenancy agreement, Stonewater may, after consulting the tenants affected, increase, add to, remove, reduce, or vary the services provided or introduce new services for which there may be a new charge.
Your feedback is important to us, and so we invite you to make written observations in relation to the proposed changes by emailing observations@stonewater.org or writing to:
Suite C Lancaster House, Grange Business Park, Enderby Road, Leicester, LE8 6EP.
You can also share your thoughts by calling 01202 449 212 and leaving us a voicemail.
Observations must be received by Wednesday 21 January 2026, which is the date the consultation period will end.
When will the changes be made?
When the consultation period ends, we’ll review all of your feedback and make a decision based on this.
If we go ahead with the proposed changes, you will start paying for these services as part of your rent review for 2026/27. We will not introduce any new charges before 6 April 2026.
We’ll be contacting everyone no later than the end of February 2026 with their new rent and service charge information and can provide support to anyone who is worried about their finances.
