Keeping communal areas clear

To ensure the health and safety of our residents who live in blocks with communal areas, such as hallways and stairs, we are obliged to ensure that such areas are free of health and safety and fire hazards. Not just flammable items but anything that can obstruct a potential escape route or hinder the access of emergency services.

Residents are not permitted to use the communal areas to store personal household belongings nor to have items such as doormats, flowerpots, bench seats or shoe storage.

Where we discover any health and safety hazards in communal areas, we will firstly try and locate the owner of the items and ask for them to be removed, if we are unable to identify the owner, we will then serve a Tort Notice on the items.

A Tort Notice is a legal document which we attach to any items that are left in communal areas. It gives you notice that we are going to remove the items once the notice has expired, which is usually after a period of seven days. A notice would be sent to the whole block if we don’t know who left the item in the communal area. The Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 allows landlords to dispose of goods, if reasonable efforts to trace the owner fail.

What happens if you receive a Tort Notice

• If we identify items that have been left in communal areas we will attach a Tort Notice to them, which gives a date by when they must be removed.
• You can either store the items within your own home or dispose of them as soon as possible.
• If the items are not removed by the date shown, Westward will arrange for the disposal of them in line with our policy, and you may be charged for the removal.

Please work with us to keep your communal areas clean and safe for everyone. Whilst we understand that removing any items can be irritating and inconvenient, we are doing it to protect lives and to keep you and the fire service safe.

If you have any questions, please get in in touch.