Ousting a property management company

[AlmaMartyr]

We live on an estate, built about 9/10 years ago. Most of the properties are freehold although quite a few are BTL rather than owner-occupied. There is some communal land (mostly a long strip of trees and a "playground" () - basically a small enclosure with a wooden mushroom in.) that we pay a property management company to look after. The yearly fee has gone up by 50% in the last couple of years and no-one on the estate is terribly happy, especially since they don't seem to do much maintenance either.

Does anyone know if there's a way of "firing" the property management company and hiring an alternative (or possibly doing it ourselves?)?

I googled and found information about setting up a Resident's Association to deal with it, but that seemed to be about leasehold flats so I wasn't sure if it applied to freeholds.

[limitedperiodonly]

You can can get property managers removed if you show that are poor managers.

It used to be through an organisation called the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal or Residential Property Tribunal Service but it I've googled and it seems to have changed.

Contact these people. They're great. Your situation is probably covered but if not I'm sure they'll be able to point you in the right direction.

www.lease-advice.org/

[AlmaMartyr]

Thank you so much for that, I'll check it out. Sounds like a definite possibility, we have the year's budget and it's a bit odd in places so worth questioning. Thanks for answering!