Block Management in Chard
Block, estate and leasehold management for Chard. Compliance is tracked against Somerset Council.
Managing a Block in Chard at a Glance
- Local authority
- Somerset Council
- Authority type
- Unitary
- Building control
- Somerset Building Control, the council's own service covering the four former district areas
- County
- Somerset
- Fire and rescue service
- Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service
- Water and sewerage
- Wessex Water
- Setting
- Inland
Who You Deal with in Chard
A block in Chard deals with Somerset Council, a unitary authority, so building control, planning and housing enforcement sit with one body. Fire safety in the common parts is enforced by Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service. Communal water and sewerage is Wessex Water.
The Residential Stock in Chard
Across the town's output areas, 1,130 of 6,350 households were in flats at the 2021 Census, 17.8 per cent, made up of 927 in purpose-built blocks, 100 in a converted or shared house, 45 in another converted building and 58 over commercial premises. At 82 per cent of all flats, Chard has the highest purpose-built share of the Somerset towns covered here: this is a blocks town rather than a conversions town, and the management questions that follow are communal plant, block insurance and section 20 consultation rather than party wall and layout disputes. The two Chard wards each pull in rural parishes, being about 77 and 70 per cent inside the built-up area, so the ward figures of 13.4 and 14.5 per cent understate the town itself.
Flood Risk in Chard
Chard is the clearest case in Somerset of a town whose real flood problem is invisible on the river map. Only 0.2 per cent of the built-up area is in Flood Zone 3 and 0.2 per cent in Flood Zone 2, and no Environment Agency flood warning or alert area covers the town: the South Somerset upper reaches alert comes within about 30 metres of the edge without overlapping it, and the nearest warning area begins a kilometre away at Chard Reservoir. That was tested against the polygons themselves, because a radius query around the town returns both and would suggest the opposite. The risk is surface water. The strategic flood risk assessment names Chard among the South Somerset settlements most at risk of surface water flooding and notes that the sewer network serving it is combined and therefore has limited capacity. Three separate section 19 investigations have been published, more than for anywhere else in Somerset: at least 100 properties affected on 28 June 2021 in what was assessed as a 1 in 300 year rainfall event with 95mm falling in two and a half hours, four properties in October 2021, and 83 properties internally flooded on 26 January 2025 from 56.40mm in what was only a 2 year return period. The council's explanation is topographic: the town sits in a wide valley with hills on either side forming a bowl, and it straddles a watershed, with most drains running to the River Isle and some to the Axe. The 2021 report is directly relevant to block management, recording that Silver Street flooding blocked the entrance to a block of flats whose doorway sits lower than the road. The council's consultants concluded in 2026 that a wider series of catchment based interventions will be needed and that this is likely to be a very substantial investment requirement and a long term project.
For a block that reaches leaseholders through the insurance premium and excess, and through the management pack when someone sells.
Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings in Chard
One conservation area, and its designation date is genuinely disputed between two official sources, so both are given here rather than one being chosen quietly. The council's own Chard Conservation Area Appraisal of 2012 states that the area was first designated in 1980; the national dataset, sourced from the council, records 1973. Boundary amendments and the appraisal content were approved by committee on 14 December 2011. The appraisal divides the area into three character areas: Fore Street and High Street, Old Town and Holyrood Street, and Upper Combe Street. At 0.226 square kilometres it covers 5.9 per cent of the built-up town.
The council's 2012 appraisal describes over 100 listed building entries including a Grade I parish church, late sixteenth and early seventeenth century gentry houses, eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses, public buildings, nonconformist churches and multi-storey former mill buildings, with over 60 entries in the Fore Street and High Street character area alone. Intersecting Historic England's current data with the built-up area gives 156 entries, two Grade I and eight Grade II*, of which 132 fall inside the conservation area. The two Grade I are the Church of St Mary the Virgin and the Fore Street group that includes King Charles Mews and its water pump. One of the Grade II* entries is the former Gifford Fox and Company factory building, which is an unusual thing to find at that grade and a reminder that industrial fabric in this town carries the same consent burden as the gentry houses.
The sequencing is what catches boards out: consent first, then the Section 20 specification. Specify and consult before consent is in hand and the consultation has to be run again.
Radon in Chard
The highest reading of any Somerset town covered here. The town centre returns class 5 on the UK Health Security Agency and British Geological Survey mapping, meaning a maximum radon potential of 10 to 30 per cent of homes at or above the action level, with the published advice that radon measurement is advised. Eight of the eleven one-kilometre squares over the built-up area are in that band, with two at 3 to 5 per cent and one lower. For a block that matters most at ground floor and in any basement plant room or bin store, and it is worth measuring rather than assuming.
Nobody's flat includes the plant room or the undercroft, which is why those get overlooked. A three-month test is cheap and the result sits with the compliance record.
Planning Policy That Affects Flats in Chard
Decided under the South Somerset Local Plan 2006 to 2028, whose cover records adoption in March 2015. Chard carries two of its own strategic policies. The Chard Strategic Growth Area policy provides for at least 2,716 dwellings, around 13 hectares of employment land, two new primary schools and four neighbourhood centres at Avishayes, Stop Line Slopes, Millfields and Holbear; the phasing policy delivers at least 1,220 of those dwellings within the plan period through the Chard Eastern Development Area. There is no neighbourhood plan, and Chard does not appear on the council's register even as one in production. There is no Article 4 direction either, and that is a checked negative: the South Somerset conservation area directions are at Bruton, Castle Cary, Wincanton and two parts of Yeovil, with a further set covering Yeovil houses in multiple occupation, and Chard appears in none of them.
This is development plan policy, so it binds the council when it decides an application and it binds a leaseholder's alteration just as it binds a developer's scheme. It sits alongside, not instead of, the consent the lease requires.
Changing Managing Agent in Chard
A board does not need a reason to change agent and does not need the outgoing agent's agreement. It needs to follow its own articles and serve whatever notice the management agreement requires. On Chard heritage stock the consents history is what most often turns out to be incomplete, and its absence resurfaces later as a planning problem.
See the handover sequence in full, and our fees, which are a fixed annual amount with no commission on contractor work.
Service charge or accounts query? Email accounts@plymouthblockmanagement.com and quote your development and flat number, or .
Chard Questions
Which Council Does a Block in Chard Deal With?
Somerset Building Control, the council's own service covering the four former district areas. One body, so building control, planning and licensing sit together.
Who Enforces Fire Safety in the Common Parts in Chard?
Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, as the enforcing authority for the Fire Safety Order.
Who Supplies Water to a Development in Chard?
Wessex Water. A communal supply is the building's contract, not a leaseholder's, so report a loss to common parts through us.
Do We Need Consent for External Works in Chard?
On a listed building or in a conservation area, yes, for much that would be permitted elsewhere. Get it before the Section 20 specification, not after.
Nearby Areas
Talk to Us About Your Building in Chard.
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