Our Approach
What to Expect from Bovellan?
Every managing agent says they're different. This page shows you how we actually work. Below you'll find real examples from buildings we manage — fire safety done proportionately, hidden defects diagnosed and fixed — alongside an honest account of our approach to insurance, service charges, major works, and what happens when you appoint us. If you're a leaseholder or resident director of a Victorian or period block wondering what good management looks like, this is our answer.
Fire Safety in a Victorian Mansion Block: The right question is: “What is required to protect life?” not “What does the box I need to tick say?”
When Bovellan took on the management of a Victorian mansion block, we inherited a fire risk assessment that demanded two things: the wholesale replacement of every flat front entrance door, and the installation of a sprinkler system and endless other recommendations to align with the latest building regulations.
Aside from much of the recommendations, the flat front entrance doors in question were ornate hardwood, set within elaborate original surrounds part of the building's architectural identity! Their principal offence, it seemed, was not having been recently manufactured and carrying a BWF certificate. The previous agent, their surveyor, and their fire risk assessor had simply accepted these recommendations at face value.
We didn't. When challenged, the recommendations proved difficult to trace back to the primary purposes of fire safety legislation: protecting life, protecting property, and maintaining safe means of escape. They read instead as generic prescriptions; produced when an assessor applies a modern new-build checklist to a nineteenth-century building.
So we engaged a senior fire engineer with genuine expertise in Victorian buildings — someone fluent not only in fire dynamics, but in the legislation, the Building Regulations, and crucially, how they apply to historic buildings that cannot, and are not required to, meet the latest standards to the letter.
Working together, we developed a proportionate, risk-based strategy: targeted compartmentation improvements, enhanced protection of the common escape routes, and a programme of resident engagement. The outcome balanced the safety of occupiers with cost, compliance, and the preservation of the building's character. We avoided the need for sprinklers or skips full of Victorian joinery.
The lesson: in period buildings, the right question is never "what does the checklist say?" but "what does this building actually need to keep its residents safe?" Answering it well takes specialist expertise and the willingness to challenge generic guidance.
The Case of the very Concealed Gutter: Why Knowing a Building Matters
Some building defects announce themselves. Others hide — quite literally — above your head.
This building had been substantially renovated, with an additional floor added at roof level. Somewhere in that process, a decision was made to conceal a gutter within the roof void of the new top floor, discharging into the rear dormer. Out of sight, out of mind — until it rained.
When Bovellan took over the management, the owner of the top floor flat was suffering leaks into their living room every time there was heavy rainfall. We also learned something troubling: the client had requested quarterly gutter clearances from the previous agent, but as far as we could establish, the concealed gutter was never identified or flushed.
As soon as the resident told us the leaks were regular rather than a one-off, we investigated properly. What we found was a narrow, concealed gutter with minimal fall, running directly above the resident's ceiling. With no clearance regime in place, foliage and debris had accumulated to the point where heavy rain would overwhelm the gutter and back up straight into the living room below.
All the fix took was a little understanding; once we knew the gutter existed, where it ran, and why it failed, the answer was a cost-effective monthly flushing regime, timed to stay ahead of debris. There has not been a single leak since.
The lesson: period and altered buildings keep secrets. Effective management means investigating causes rather than repainting symptoms and making sure that maintenance that has been promised is maintenance that actually happens.
Buildings Insurance Lower Premiums, No Agent Commissions. Every building we manage has seen its insurance premium reduced in the first year.
It's the direct result of how we manage buildings and it isn’t luck!
Insurers price risk. A Victorian block with a planned preventative maintenance programme that is actually adhered to not just filed away is a demonstrably better risk than one managed reactively. Our claims record proves it: where claims have arisen on our portfolio, every one has been caused by matters outside our control, such as vandalism or escapes of water from pipework demised to individual flats. Not one has stemmed from neglected communal fabric.
Prevention is built into our routine. On every estate inspection we are looking for tomorrow's claim: a slipped tile on a pitched roof, a displaced cast iron downpipe connection, a cracked flat roof covering, visibly damp timber windows or doors. These are dealt with as a matter of routine, while they are still small before they become an insurance claim, a premium increase, and a large bill.
And on commissions: we don't take them. Insurance commissions are a quiet profit centre for much of our industry. Our approach is simple and transparent: we charge a management fee, and part of that job is appointing an independent broker to search the market for the best cover at the lowest price. The broker earns a commission rightly so, since they do the work of placing the policy. Our role as agent is to appoint the right broker and ensure our clients get the right cover. Nothing is added, marked up, or hidden.
Better-maintained buildings, honestly insured, at lower cost. It's not complicated — it just requires actually doing the work.
Working on Victorian Buildings: Repair the Building, Not the Checklist
There's a prevailing view in block management that the cost-effective way to handle major works is to wrap the whole building in scaffolding for months and do everything at once. Sometimes that's right; economies of scale are real. But we don't blanket-recommend it, because large projects carry exponentially larger overheads: prolonged scaffold hire, site management, and professional fees, much of which never touches the building. Worse, the specialist contractors these buildings need get squeezed out; large main contractors win the tender and subcontract labour of varying quality, making oversight harder precisely when it matters most.
And with Victorian buildings, specialist knowledge always matters. A Victorian mansion block isn't a modern building with an older aesthetic it's a fundamentally different construction system. Solid masonry walls that absorb and release moisture rather than repel it behind membranes.
Lime mortar and render that are deliberately soft, breathable, and forgiving of movement — repoint them in hard cement and you trap moisture in the brick, doing damage in the name of repair. Ornate cornices, string courses, and sills that aren't decoration but part of the weathering system. Sash windows built to be overhauled and re-corded (often from the inside) for a century, not replaced as sealed units. Embedded ironwork that can quietly crack the stone around it as it corrodes.
Modern buildings are maintained by component replacement. Victorian buildings reward continuous repair: inspect, understand the cause, repair the minimum necessary, protect, and inspect again. That repairability is one of their great strengths in the hands of restoration contractors who understand lime, timber, and traditional detailing.
Our approach: targeted, well-sequenced works using genuine specialists, scaled up only when the fabric and the numbers justify it. Money on the building not the scaffolding around it.
Service Charge Optimisation; only 2.73% increase in Three Years across our managed portfolio
Across the buildings we manage, the total cumulative service charge increase over the past three years is less than 3% at the time of writing. Over a period in which insurance, labour, and construction costs have risen sharply across the industry, we think that number speaks volumes.
How? Not by cutting corners by cutting waste.
Take one major site of over 100 flats, with a total annual budget approaching £1 million including reserves. The previous agent had designed a planned maintenance programme involving £10 million of expenditure over ten years — of which 40% was combined professional fees. Four million pounds of leaseholders' money, not for works, but for the professionals surrounding them.
We take a different approach:
We instruct professionals only when it is necessary and prudent. Surveyors, engineers, and consultants have vital roles on the right projects. We do not appoint them reflexively, and we try and avoid blanket percentage-based fee arrangements that reward project inflation.
We are risk-based, not tick-box. Every building budgets for items like fire risk assessments and asbestos surveys. Their purpose is to protect life and property not to generate a piece of paper certifying that a survey took place.
We commission these assessments to genuinely understand and reduce risk, and we act on what they find. The result is buildings that are both safer and cheaper to run.
We invest in people who care. We encourage and support site staff who love their buildings not tick-box concierges keeping a seat warm. Victorian mansion blocks are living, breathing works of art, brought to life by the people who live in them and look after them.
Lower service charges and better-run buildings are not opposing goals. Done properly, each produces the other.
Appointing Bovellan: A Smooth Transition
Changing managing agent feels daunting, but it isn’t with Bovellan.
It starts with a conversation, not a contract. Before anything else, we spend time getting to know you, your building, and what you actually need. What's working? What isn't? What issues do you want addressed, and how do you want your building run? We're candid about fit, too: we accept that we aren't the right agent for everyone. We're best suited to larger blocks — but our priority is working with fine examples of Victorian architecture, so for the right building, we can make anything work.
Then we adapt our approach to you. No two buildings or boards of directors are the same, and our management shouldn't be either. Once we understand your priorities, we shape our service around them.
The first few months are about understanding, not upheaval. We obtain all the necessary information and records from the outgoing agent, get to know the fabric of the building, review compliance, risk assessments, and previous insurance claims, meet the site staff, and get under the skin of how the building actually operates day to day. This groundwork is what makes everything afterwards run smoothly.
Why the service stays personal:
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We deliberately keep our portfolio manageable, so every building receives optimal attention.
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We use technology to help humans — where some agents have used it to replace them.
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Because our focus is proactive management, reactive firefighting; which consumes much of other agents' time, accounts for far less of ours. That time goes back into your building.
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Our clients receive discounted access to College of Block Management courses, so resident directors are supported and informed, not kept in the dark.
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And we make ourselves accountable. We're confident in our management — so confident that our standard terms allow you to leave on just three months' notice. We're regulated by RICS and members of The Property Ombudsman scheme.
Ready to talk? Contact info@bovellan.co.uk or call 0203 151 5859 to arrange a complimentary management review.