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Stewardship Charge 2025

In November the resident-led Lightmoor Village Estate Management Committee met to review the budgets for 2025.

During the meeting, the committee considered the rising cost of managing, maintaining and improving the Village and delivering the community events, activities and partnership working.

In order to continue all of this work, alongside improving the grounds maintenance and stewardship service, the committee agreed that the Stewardship Charge for 2025 would increase by 3.2%. Details below:

Charge2024 charge2025 chargeIncrease
Standard rate (Paid by all Lightmoor Village households)£378.75£390.87£12.12
Enhanced rate (Additional charge for those properties with a courtyard or shared road in BVT ownership)£73.66£76.02£2.36

The audited accounts for 2024 will be available in June 2025 and will be published on this website. In the meantime, as requested by the committee, the estimated 2025 budget is below. This details how the money from the Stewardship Charge will be spent. As the income received from the Stewardship Charge doesn’t cover the cost of managing the village, the contribution Bournville Village Trust (BVT) makes is also included.

V5-FINAL-Lightmoor-Charge-flyer-2025Download

Below are some FAQ’s regarding the Stewardship Charge, if at any time you would like to discuss this with the Estates & Stewardship Manager, please either pop into the BVT Office in the Oak Tree Community Centre or email [email protected].

FAQ’s

BVT provides the Estates and Stewardship Service for Lightmoor Village. All residents, regardless of whether you are a tenant or homeowner, pay the Stewardship Charge so that we can maintain Lightmoor Village and help to build a strong and inclusive community.

Long-term stewardship in Lightmoor Village can be broken down into four main areas:
• Community Development, Partnerships and Communications.
• Estate Management.
• Grounds Maintenance.
• Wear & Tear Fund.

You can find out what is included in each of these services on our website
https://bvtlightmoorvillage.org.uk/your-home/estates-and-stewardship-service

Residents who have the use of an access road, shared driveway or courtyard, maintained by us, pay the enhanced rate of the Stewardship Charge. All other residents pay the standard Stewardship Charge rate.

The policy to charge the enhanced rate of the Stewardship Charge was introduced by the previous resident-led Lightmoor Village Estates Management Committee in consultation with all residents. It was considered and agreed that the cost of maintaining the access roads, shared driveways and courtyards should be partly covered by all residents, as all residents and the Village as a whole, benefit from these areas being well maintained.

However, the residents with vehicle access off these areas benefit more and therefore, it was felt that it was appropriate that there was a higher charge which would need to contribute towards the higher maintenance costs.

Any household that has vehicle access over a shared area (courtyard, driveway, mews link, private road etc.) This includes residents with a parking space in a courtyard, garages or driveways accessed off a shared drive, private road or mews link that we own and manage.

We do not apply the charge to residents who only have pedestrian access over a shared driveway as this would not significantly contribute to the wear and tear of the area.

Until now your area will have been the responsibility of the developer who built it. The developer would have been paying the electricity for lighting and undertaking any repairs. These areas have now been transferred to us.

When new housing estates are built, local authorities no longer take on the responsibility of adopting and maintaining them, aside from their duty to maintain main roads.
Bournville Village Trust (BVT) has the ability to recover all the costs incurred in managing Lightmoor Village through the legal rights or covenants granted in property transfers (also known as Deeds or a TP1/TR1) or tenancy agreements.

We provide services to residents as soon as their home is occupied. Alongside the huge amount of green and open spaces, parks, and play areas that we manage and maintain, we also provide guidance on home alterations and applications, covenants and breaches and community development activities for everyone in the Village.

Our team is available to all Lightmoor residents and provide help and advice for any concerns you may have. We know it can be confusing to understand who may be responsible for each piece of land and we are always happy to advise. If an area doesn’t fall within our responsibility, we will raise issues on your behalf with the responsible organisation.

Covenants allow us to recover all of the costs associated with looking after Lightmoor Village. However, we choose not to do this and instead, all residents contribute towards costs and BVT contributes to the shortfall.
This is because BVT recognises the importance of ensuring that residents can live in safe, clean, and green places with access to open spaces and parks that also help us to achieve our aim of place-shaping and wider mission of creating and sustaining communities where people can thrive. BVT recognises that this comes at a cost but that the overall charge paid by residents should also remain affordable.

The level of the charge is reviewed and set every year by the resident-led Lightmoor Village Estate Management Committee. Cost of living is always considered by committee, as well as market rises, for example looking at the increasing cost of grit and other materials.

They consider these changes to costs and the work that needs to be done in managing, maintaining, and improving the Village and delivering community events, activities and partnership working.

Any changes to costs are carefully considered in the budget preparation work that takes place before decisions are made in the November committee meeting each year.

Every year part of the Stewardship Charge is set aside and added to a Wear and Tear Fund to cover the cost of future repairs and maintenance in areas we manage and maintain. This is done in line with our 30-year asset management plan that looks at the lifecycles of all of the components and estimates the future costs to repair or replace them.
This includes:

• Replacement of hard surfaces, such as tarmac and block paving.
• Replacement of lampposts.
• Replacement of street furniture, such as litter bins.
• Regular maintenance of trees.
• Regular maintenance of drainage systems/replacement of drainage systems.

Adding money to the Wear and Tear Fund means that we can avoid large spikes in the charge to cover these costs in the future.