Freehold homeowners say they feel 'fleeced' over service charges they pay to a private firm.
FirstPort charges residents more than £9,000 a year to look after this balancing pondThis is how Karen Stokes describes paying management company FirstPort to maintain land surrounding a small balancing pond near her home in Wigston, Leicestershire.
The couple did not receive a bill for the first two years, but, when they did, they say FirstPort demanded a fee of £117.23 per household.Karen and Tony had hoped for a quiet retirement when they bought their home A breakdown of this year's bill - seen by the BBC - shows only £1,158 of the total figure went towards maintenance costs.
"We would go through any issues they had, and then we would contact FirstPort to try and resolve these issues," he says.Pete says FirstPort eventually stopped engaging with his committee and he has since stepped back from helping residents. When asked about the fees it charges homeowners who live on the estates in Wigston and Fernwood, a spokesperson for FirstPort told the BBC: "Service charges have risen across our entire industry."We take our responsibilities very seriously... we work hard to meet the high standards our customers rightly expect."
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