A Guide to Living in Wandsworth

Please review your development:

Building is very well maintained and it is clear a lot of money is being spent adding facilities to ram quarter. Furthermore, there are plenty of pubs and restaurants nearby so lots of opportunities for social events. The staff are also really friendly and helpful

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

The cost of bills etc is much higher than expected

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

They have been late to reply to any of our messages and all problems have only been temporary to fixes

Please review your development:

Building well-maintained and the facilities are generally excellent. Sky Pool is obviously a landmark attraction but obviously weather-dependent. Gym in Legacy Building is good, but a shame that there isn’t an indoor pool without having to walk to the other end of the complex.

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

Council tax is nice and low. Facilities great, staff extremely helpful.

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

No issues, everything I have asked for has been no problem.

Please review your development:

Good points: not in congestion charge zone but still relatively easy to access central London, it has a nice feel when you walk in, a nice design, even though the build is very cheap and not durable in many places, the surrounding area is starting to become really nice (it was awful / nothing before). The facilities are as you would expect for a building of current age but many things sadly let it down: the bin store is a huge mess, stinks, people leave rubbish outside, it is really badly managed and I do not understand why they did not build a bin shoot instead. Every other modern of high standard has this. Why Ballymore decided not to do this is beyond me. The facilities are good but the charges are horrendous. They keep increasing yet the staff pay (so I found out) is not increasing and in fact staff cuts have taken place in my time here ie having a negative effect on the service provided to me. The worst point however is the management. It took several months for facilities to even get back to me about an issue in the apartment. Generally I never know who is responsible for what. The communication is non-existent or not very transparent. The bookings for the facilities has become totally onerous and complicated. If you have any sort of issue you get passed from one person to the next but nothing happens, no one feels responsible. This guy is supposed to manage things but he doesn’t. I don’t understand why he is still employed or what he even does. There are so many little things that make me uncomfortable and considering the amount of money I pay I really don’t feel welcome or treated very nicely. Last but not least: be prepared to be ripped off wherever possible. They lure you in with all the nice things, free coffee in the facilities etc. Suddenly the increase your annual fees, make you pay for the coffee, make you pay for the towels in the pool (no it is not legal to bring your own because then they cannot charge you), pay for your inductions, have a reduced service for the parcel service and so on and so on.

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

Oh so many to list. I wish I had known about being ripped off, having to pay for every little bit which I was previously told was free. Also the booking system for all the facilities is very inefficient at the moment. You have some people that would like to use a certain facility more and others less but they cannot because the number of bookings is restricted and yet I witness exactly those facilities empty a lot of the time.

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

Really poorly, see above. The building management is the weak point. Khalid and some of the other staff are nice but sadly there are too many which do not understand that their customers are paying a premium for their services and are providing below average service.

Please review your development:

The development is very modern, with all
The amenities you would expect. Though Legacy building in which I live, has a much smaller gym than capital building, though we do have the newly built sky pool (which we can only use 6 times per month and we get charged £25 to bring a guest). Towels also must be rented or to buy a towel from embassy gardens for use at the sky pool only.

The lifts are constantly not working, either it’s one lift for the whole of legacy building was or 0.. and taking the stairs up and down 13 floors is killer.

The concierge is very helpful with what ever we need, though complaints never seem to go anywhere when there is an issue within the building.

A major disappointing issue which recently arose was the water bill. Who ever installed our water services in the apartment had not installed correctly, and the reader was not providing the water company with the current usage. So 2 weeks ago we received a bill of £900 for over the past 2 years of non recorded water. The building management should check each apartment because this was ridiculous.

Also buildings service fee is £6000 per year.. which is very much extortion, especially after paying 1.7m for an apartment. This only covers gym, concierge and building maintenance.. with 1000s of residents I’m not sure how it comes to £6000

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

The service fee – especially paying the same amount during covid when less amenities/staff were in use.

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

After the 2 years aftercare they refuse to fix anything.