Block managers
Compliance software for block and estate managers.
Nobody lives in the parts you are responsible for, and everybody notices when something goes wrong in them.
14 days free access · no card needed
Block management inverts the usual arrangement. The compliance attaches to the parts of the building nobody has a tenancy over — the plant room, the stairwell, the roof, the lifts — and the people you answer to are leaseholders who own their flats and have a direct financial interest in what you spend.
That produces a particular kind of scrutiny. A leaseholder is not a tenant: they can ask what was done, when, by whom and at what cost, and they are entitled to a level of answer a tenant usually is not. Records are consulted far more often here than in a lettings portfolio.
Building safety has also moved fastest in this part of the market, and the direction of travel is towards more evidence rather than less — held continuously, not assembled when somebody asks.
The records
What block managers have to keep
- Communal gas and electrical safety evidence
- Fire detection, alarms and emergency lighting records
- Lift and plant servicing records
- Water hygiene and legionella risk assessments
- Communal inspections, and the repairs they raise
- Contractor insurance and accreditation expiry
PropertyOptix holds each of these against the property or tenancy it belongs to, with its own expiry.
The problem
What makes this hard for block managers
Compliance with no tenancy attached
The obligations sit on communal parts rather than on a let, so none of it is prompted by a tenancy starting or ending. Nothing in the calendar naturally raises it, which means it has to be scheduled deliberately or not at all.
Leaseholders who are entitled to ask
A leaseholder has a financial stake and a right to information. Questions arrive about specific work on specific dates, often long afterwards, and an incomplete answer becomes a dispute rather than an inconvenience.
Plant and systems on their own schedules
Lifts, pumps, alarms, emergency lighting and water systems each run to their own servicing cycle, carried out by different specialists. Nothing ties those cycles together except somebody holding the whole picture.
Contractors across many sites
The same contractors work across several blocks, and their insurance and accreditation have to be current for all of it. A lapse is not a per-block problem, it is a portfolio-wide one that appears everywhere at once.
A standard that keeps rising
Expectations on building safety evidence have moved quickly, and the burden falls on whoever manages the building day to day. Records that were adequate a few years ago are now the starting point rather than the answer.
The answer
How PropertyOptix helps
Plant and systems on their own schedules
Each certificate and servicing record carries its own expiry with alerts ahead of it, so systems on unrelated cycles are watched independently rather than together.
CertificatesCompliance with no tenancy attached
Inspections are scheduled against the building and its communal parts, and findings are raised as repairs, so the work is driven by a cycle rather than by somebody noticing.
InspectionsContractors across many sites
Contractors sit on a register with insurance and accreditation expiry tracked, so a lapse shows up once rather than being discovered block by block.
ContractorsLeaseholders who are entitled to ask
A repair is recorded from report through to close-out, so what was done, when and by whom is a record rather than a reconstruction from emails.
RepairsA standard that keeps rising
Reporting runs across the whole portfolio, so the position for every building is visible at once rather than per block on request.
Compliance Reporting
Who it is for
The people doing this job
Block and estate managers
Running several buildings, each with its own plant, systems and leaseholders.
property inspectionManaging agents
Holding the management contract and answerable to a freeholder or a residents' company.
Health and safety advisers
Carrying the risk assessments the servicing schedule is built on.
legionella risk assessmentContractors and specialists
Servicing lifts, alarms and water systems across several sites under their own accreditations.
Leaseholders and residents' companies
Entitled to ask what was done and what it cost.
Questions
What block managers ask
- Does it handle service charge accounting?
- No. There is no accounting, budgeting or service charge demand in it, and that is a deliberate boundary rather than a gap. It handles the compliance, the inspections, the repairs and the contractor records, and sits alongside whatever you use for money.
- Can we track plant servicing as well as certificates?
- Yes. Anything with a date and a document — a lift service, an alarm test, a water hygiene assessment — is held with its own expiry in the same way a gas safety record is.
- Can we see every building at once?
- Yes. Portfolio-wide reporting is the point: the position across every block, so a lapse does not depend on somebody opening the right building's folder.
- Does it produce the information leaseholders can request?
- It holds the record of what was done, when and by whom, which is the substance of most of those questions. The formal process for responding to a statutory request stays yours, and PropertyOptix does not hold the cost side.
- Does it cover building safety case requirements?
- It is not a building safety case tool and does not claim to satisfy any specific regime. It holds the records a managing agent keeps day to day, which is usually the evidence those regimes draw on.
Keep reading
Every certificate, on the property it belongs to
Properties, tenancies, inspections and repairs on one record, for block managers.
14 days free access · no card needed