Response 4074618

Response to request for information

Reference

4074618

Response date

12 August 2026

Request

I am making this request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I request information held by Rushcliffe Borough Council relating to residential developments in East Leake where estate management companies are responsible for the maintenance of public open space, Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS), landscaping, play areas, roads or other communal infrastructure.

For each managed residential estate in East Leake, please provide the following information where it is held:

• The planning application reference number.
• The name of the development.
• The number of private open market dwellings approved.
• The number of affordable or housing association dwellings approved.
• The name(s) of the registered provider(s) or housing association(s) involved.
• Copies of the Section 106 Agreement(s), Deed(s) of Variation and any subsequent amendments relating to:
  • affordable housing; public open space; estate management; SuDS; maintenance obligations; and any financial contributions relating to these matters, where not already publicly available.
• Copies of any planning conditions relating to:
  • estate management arrangements; maintenance of public open space; future adoption of infrastructure; management companies;
  • long-term maintenance responsibilities. Any documents, reports, committee reports, officer reports or planning documents explaining how the ongoing maintenance of communal land and infrastructure was intended to be funded.
• Whether the Council holds any information indicating whether affordable housing or housing association properties were intended to contribute towards estate management or public open space maintenance costs. Where such information is held, whether those contributions were intended to be:
  • equal to private dwellings;
  • reduced;
  • recovered through another mechanism; or
  • not payable.
• Copies of any correspondence between the Council and the developer; the management company; the housing association; or Nottinghamshire County Council, discussing responsibility for estate management charges, maintenance liabilities or affordable housing contributions.
• Whether the Council holds any information explaining why affordable housing properties on any East Leake managed estate are exempt from, or required to contribute towards, estate management charges.
• Whether the Council has received complaints, representations or enquiries concerning:
  • estate management charges;
  • unequal charging between private and affordable housing;
  • management companies operating on East Leake developments; or
  • requests for adoption of public open space or communal infrastructure.

If the Council does not hold the requested information for any development, please identify which organisation is most likely to hold it (for example, the developer, registered provider or management company). If any part of this request exceeds the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, I request that you provide as much of the information as possible within the statutory limit and advise me how I may refine the remainder of the request.

Where documents are already publicly available, please provide the relevant web links rather than duplicate copies.

I would specifically ask whether Rushcliffe Borough Council  assessed the equality and fairness of these arrangements, across the community of East Leake during the planning process. If so, please provide any Equality Impact Assessments, officer reports, viability assessments, legal advice, committee reports or other documents held by the Council that considered whether the proposed arrangements for estate management charges, including any exclusion of affordable housing properties from contributing to communal maintenance costs, were fair, reasonable and consistent with the planning objectives for the development.

Response

Your request relates to a combination of either information already published and in the public domain, or which is not held by the council. The council cannot release information which it does not hold, and provision of information already freely available in the public realm is exempt from release via Freedom of Information Requests under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act. 

All planning documents, including s106 agreements (and any subsequent variations) where they have been entered into, and decision notices including full lists of conditions, are published online via the Councils' Planning Portal  this includes both a map search function and 'advanced' search options which allow you to filter applications by ward or parish, as well as a variety of other criteria. 

Within approved documents will be layout plans which identify affordable housing, both via highlighting on the plan and by listing market and affordable units in separate inset tables. Where held the names of maintenance companies and affordable housing providers will be contained within Affordable Housing Schemes and Open Space Schemes submitted as "OBLIG" reference applications linked to s106 agreements, again these are published on the online portal. The council does not maintain a separate master-list or published list specifically extracting these matters from planning files which it can provide.  

The council does not "name" developments; most are referred to by the Council by using either a compass direction and the main road which serves them ("Land North of Main Street" - as an example) or given an OS field number where they do not well relate to a named road, this is effectively the 'address' of the development rather than a name for it. Developers tend to give sites names for advertising and marketing purposes but the council does not retain or publish records of these names and it is not by these names that the council is familiar with developments. 

S106 agreements will secure maintenance, but the mechanism by which that maintenance will be funded is not usually within the scope of the agreement. The funding of ongoing maintenance is essentially a contractual matter created between the developer building and selling houses and the parties purchasing them. As such, these matters are typically contained in sales contracts and property deeds and are not usually set out within s106 legal agreements; the Council does not hold copies of these contracts or individual property deeds (to which it is not a party). There will be no correspondence between the Council and developers/management companies specifically about maintenance charges for this reason and we will hold no information about whether affordable units are subject to management charges, or otherwise