A Guide to Living in Central London

Please review your development:

I stayed here previously with my boyfriend. Beware of the renewals each year. They do not tell you in advance about their very strict inflexible renewal terms.

An automtatic price increase is applied no matter what … even if it makes your rent higher than market rates. If you don’t agree to their unfair terms they will evict you with a s21 notice. They insist on you signing up on their non negotiable terms every 12 months – take it or leave it. Then after you leave you will see your flat is rented out at a lower rent than what you were paying due to the unreasonable annual increases.

There is no flexibility to negotiate anything like you would do with a normal Landlord. For instance no flexibility on the length of the contract, no breakclause, unreasonable rent increases are all dictated. Even something minor like extending or reducing the 12 months by one or two months is not possible … nothing is possible except everything on their terms. No one tells you this when you sign on. Their lettings team are all very nice at the start, but you deal with different people upon renewal.

You don’t find out any of this until it is time to renew. Notice the positive reviews on here are only from people who have just signed up or who have not had to renew yet. There are also the lucky long standing option B tenants who are protected by their own long standing contracts.

Management are extremely unpleasant to deal with. One in particular is very rude, unprofessional, nasty and condescending. We were told these unfair and inflexble policies were only put in place when she arrived by her.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

How inflexible the lettings team are and how unreasonable the price increases are each year.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

We could not get any face to face meetings with them. They issued a s21 notice and evicted us but we were looking to leave anyway but they did not allow us to leave early. The landlord is extremely inflexible and uncaring.

Please review your development:

If you are considering living in Pimlico, do not live in Dolphin Square.

It is incredibly overpriced, and facilities frequently break down. I lost hot (and sometimes cold) water and/or heating on a number of days last year, often in winter. There has been a concerning dripping sound in the pipes in the wall of my bedroom for months; it keeps me awake at night, but, despite several requests, they are yet to send a maintenance person to come and look into it.

The lift in my building has been broken for six months, and they claim it will take another three months to fix. I only found this out after chasing them by email for weeks for status updates. It simply does not take this long to fix a lift. There are almost never any engineers in the lift shaft, so I don’t know what they are doing.

Staff are rude—one told me to go away when I complained about bad smells from the floor below, and claimed I was a timewaster. The lettings team will lie to you outright: they deliberately misrepresented their position when we asked for a small reduction in our rent due to the pandemic, claiming all the flats were full and that they had a long waiting list, so I would be evicted (yes, they said evicted) if I did not agree to an enormous rent increase by the end of the week. Needless to say, I have subsequently found out that this is not true, and they have hundreds of empty flats, probably because of the reasons I have outlined in this review.

On top of that, it is worth noting that management are heartless bullies: I asked to end my lease a few months early because I couldn’t bear the constant loss of hot water, the nonstop dripping, or the strange smells that would often linger for days… and, instead of agreeing to discuss this possibility with me, I instead received a cease and desist letter from the solicitors that represent Dolphin Square. I long suspected none of them ever really cared about customer service, given how hard it is to get through to them (even pre-covid), but was not expecting to be bulldozed by a lawyer when I brought up legitimate complaints and politely enquired if it might be possible to leave a few months early after having been a paying tenant for nearly five years.

So, in short, it’s not worth the money, or the hassle. It sounds attractive, and the website makes it look idyllic, but I can promise you, as someone who has lived there for nearly some time now, it is truly dreadful.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

I wish I had known how bad the facilities were, or how nasty the staff can be. It’s just not a pleasant experience living here. There are plenty of lovely places to live in and around Pimlico for less money, and probably with landlords who actually care about you. Please avoid this place and go to one of them instead!

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

All the complaints I have raised have been ignored, even after multiple follow-ups.

Please review your development:

I wouldn’t recommend living in Dolphin Square, due to the numerous issues we’ve had while living here. We’ve had lots of disruption to our hot and cold water supply, including two stretches of five and six days respectively with no hot water. Our flat is not in a great condition, with a brown stain forming on the ceiling in the main bedroom, the windowsills flaking and falling apart and a very loud clicking/dripping noise from the pipework keeping us awake at night. The aging water infrastructure is a common theme in the issues at Dolphin Square, with cases of Legionnaires’ disease also having been reported within the last couple of years.

The lifts in our building have been intermittently out of service for months, sometimes leaving us having to walk up or down seven flights of stairs.

I have raised our complaints with the management, asking for a rent reduction or early surrender based on these issues, but was sent a strongly worded letter from a solicitor telling me that my complaints were “misconceived” and a refusal to discuss the matter any further.

We can’t wait to be able to move out when our lease is over and would strongly advise anyone looking for accommodation in Pimlico to look elsewhere.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

I would totally modernise the water infrastructure – the hot water supply, the sinks, the creaky pipework.

What is the best feature of your home:

The location is the best thing about the flat – we have enjoyed exploring the area and it was convenient for getting to the office before lockdown hit in early 2020.

Please review your development:

I love living in my house!! It is amazing! Having a pool and a gym at the bottom of our building is great! I go down there loads with my brother!! It is great living high up because the view is absolutely fabulous, you can see everything! The design of the reception is brilliant and the receptionists are always so kind.

Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:

Nothing it is just brilliant there are absolutely no flaws.

How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:

They have been great and their surface is brilliant.