Our new in-house service has been operating now for a full year, and we’ve faced a few challenges.

The Great Places Grounds Maintenance Team works hard to keep customers’ shared outdoor spaces clean, neat and orderly through activities such as grass cutting, hedge cutting, trimming and pruning.

Alongside some of our sub-contractors, we provide grounds maintenance services to schemes and developments across our regions which have communal landscaped areas.

The managers have been working hard on changing things to help ensure next year runs much more smoothly. We carried out a full review of what worked well and what didn’t and we listened to our customers via a customer satisfaction survey.

Our Calendar identifies what we do and when, setting a flexible timeline that can have changes due to the weather conditions. An example of this is the weed killer application, that cannot be used if it’s either raining or rain is predicted soon. This is to prevent harmful chemicals washing into unwanted areas such as the drains or washing on to and killing plants. We also cannot mow during or after heavy rain as our mowers are commercially graded and some weigh 80kg which makes them dig in and tear the ground as they operate.

Our delivery is typically fortnightly in the growing season, which is usually April to October, and monthly during the colder months; this is of course subject to holidays. Again, it’s worth noting that the calendar is weather dependent, particularly in the early/late months of growing season and in any extreme hot weather like we saw last year. Visits will still be carried out but tasks may change according to weather conditions at the time.