SDL Property Management, Birmingham

It took months of complaints and badgering from the tenants of Spire Court for SDL to address the security issues within the flat, despite a resident being threatened with a needle. Although they had a CCTV installed, it was not manned properly, meaning that it was effectively useless, they dragged their feet when it came to installing better security doors to stop people coming off the street to use drugs. I left a month ago, and they still have not hired specialist cleaners to deal with the human waste left behind, expecting their regular cleaners to deal with it. When I left, the residents of Spire Court were involved in discussions pushing SDL to take the multiple issues surrounding the property seriously. SDL do not seem organised (at best) or concerned with the safety of their tenants (at worse).

One of the problems with the block was that there was one agency looking after the flats and another looking after the communal areas. This review is for SDL Property Management (or SDL Bigwood) - the agents for some of the flats were fairly bad at communicating and went through a huge number of staff but SDL were the major problem as it affected everyone in the block.

The communication with SDL was atrocious, some neighbours took to Twitter to voice their concerns to anyone from SDL who was willing to listen after getting nothing back from the reps who were about a 5 minute walk from the property.

There were some expected teething problems. Some of the flats were being rented on a short-term stay website and therefore being invaded at the weekends by giant groups of teenagers having parties until 5am. This meant that the place got trashed fairly quickly, and the fortnightly cleaners didn't appear for a very long time. The doors to the bin store were broken, meaning the bin men couldn't get access to empty the bins for weeks and after someone wrenched them open it allowed for another un-secured entry point to the block.

But then some things just went on for ages without being sorted. There was one corner of the block where every time the tenants opened their doors into the corridor, a blue liquid (who knows?) dropped from the ceiling in great gulps. This problem was fixed 15 months after being reported, in the meantime a lot of their visitors got covered in the mystery stuff.

But the biggest issue was the fact that no one was sorting the gates when they got stuck (once they were stuck with one half closed, the other half open, once fully closed but often they were stuck open for weeks).

This directly led to burglaries and thefts from cars. With the gates being left open for weeks there was no line of defence between the street and the flimsy front doors of the flats. The gut-punch that came after this was the 'at least we have CCTV' angle, when it transpired that SDL/Bigwood had lost the password for the CCTV system. The culprit was found, tried and sentenced without this but the one slight reassurance of there being CCTV was taken away. More recently there have been homeless people sleeping in the corner of the car park due to the gates being jammed open since before Christmas. SDL again are trying to get out of having to fix them by blaming the constant breakdowns on the building dust and saying that the contractors building the adjacent blocks are liable, despite the fact that most of the dust that's getting in is from the unfinished footpath/non-dropped kerb entrance to the car park. They are now fixed, but in the intervening time, more cars have been broken into and more people have been chased out of the car park after being caught attempting to break into cars by concerned residents.

They honestly don't seem to care that they are affecting people's lives, there are single people living in the block who are now scared at night knowing how insecure their flats are.