Tenants hopeful cleaning row has been cleared up
Tenants in a block of Bath flats are crossing their fingers in the hope a long-running dispute over cleaning contractors is at an end.
Housing association Curo this week confirmed that ‘a new team’ of cleaners were to take on the communal areas of their properties.
These changes come after Curo tenants in flats on Hillside Road claim to have endured three years of cleaning problems.
This began in 2018 when a petition was set up by the tenants due to lack of cleaning from OCS (Curo’s cleaning contractor). They received a refund from OCS at the time. In July this year some tenants set up a cleaning service to take over the cleaning work. These tenants were also offering to clean the communal areas of other blocks. The tenants at the
Hillside flats include a teacher, a Bath University employee, a building trade worker and a retired fundraising consultant.
One of the tenants leading the protests, Ken Pearson, said: “Many tenants in flats are vulnerable due to age, general and mental health problems and don’t have a voice.”
On August 5, Mr Pearson and other residents submitted another petition to Curo as they felt the service for which they pay did not meet the Curo’s Estates Standards.
When approached for comment on the situation Curo said: “We’re aware there have been some issues with the standard of cleaning of the internal communal areas at 17-32 Hillside Road in Bath. We’ve been working with the residents and our contractor OCS who are providing the service to address these issues and have agreed for a new team to start work this week. Curo will be monitoring this team’s performance closely to ensure they’re delivering a good standard of cleaning as outlined in our Estates Standards.
“We offer flexible services to suit our residents – for example, some of our customers prefer to organise their own cleaning services and will pay no service charges to us. Other residents opt for services that go over and above our Estates Standards and will pay an additional service charge cost to cover this.
“If cleaning’s not carried out by our contractor for whatever reason, we reimburse our customers for the weeks when they did not receive the service.”