Block Management in Tewkesbury
Block, estate and leasehold management for Tewkesbury. Compliance is tracked against Tewkesbury Borough Council and the county above it.
Managing a Block in Tewkesbury at a Glance
- Local authority
- Tewkesbury Borough Council
- Authority type
- District, under the county council
- Building control
- Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Building Control, shared with Cheltenham Borough Council
- County
- Gloucestershire
- Fire and rescue service
- Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service
- Water and sewerage
- Severn Trent Water
- Setting
- Inland
Who You Deal with in Tewkesbury
A block in Tewkesbury deals with Tewkesbury Borough Council for building control and planning, with the county council above it. Fire safety in the common parts is enforced by Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service. Communal water and sewerage is Severn Trent Water.
The Residential Stock in Tewkesbury
The town holds 6,472 households with 1,207 in flats, 18.6 per cent, made up of 986 in purpose-built blocks, 57 in a converted or shared house, 72 in another converted building and 92 over commercial premises, computed across the 50 output areas covering the built-up area. The internal contrast is stark and no ward figure conveys it: Tewkesbury South has 28.5 per cent of its households in flats and Tewkesbury North and Twyning 19.1 per cent, while Tewkesbury East, which delivers nearly half the built-up area, has just 67 flatted households, 3.1 per cent. Tewkesbury North and Twyning is also far larger than the town, with only 4.2 per cent of its area inside it.
Flood Risk in Tewkesbury
Tewkesbury sits at the confluence of the Severn and the Avon and is named in five separate Environment Agency areas, more than any other town covered on this site. The River Severn at Tewkesbury warning area covers 27.09 per cent of the built-up area, the Cheltenham and Tewkesbury tributaries alert 26.69 per cent, the River Severn in Gloucestershire alert 18.93 per cent, the Severn Ham warning area 2.39 per cent, naming Abbey Mill, Upper and Lower Lode and Shakespeare Court, and the River Avon in Worcestershire alert 1.11 per cent. Fifty-three further candidate areas are near the town without covering it. The 2007 benchmark is documented precisely by the council: river levels at the Mythe gauge reached a peak of 5.43 metres on 22 July against a previous record of 5.3 metres in March 1947 and normal summer levels of around half a metre, the flood on the Severn between Upton and Gloucester was assessed as having between a 0.66 and 0.5 per cent probability of occurring in any year, an estimated 810 properties were affected, properties flooded first from surface water and smaller watercourses including the Carrant and Tirle Brooks and then from the main rivers, some twice, and the centre of the town was completely cut off from vehicles. That passage sits under a heading about the borough rather than the town, so the 810 should be quoted as published rather than restated as homes in the town. Separately the Mythe water treatment works flooded on 22 July, leaving over 350,000 people without clean water for up to seventeen days. Recorded flood outlines run 1939, 1947, 1968, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1998, 2000 and 2007. On defences the honest answer is uncomfortable: the assets recorded at the town are two structures on the Avon at Abbey Mill and Stanchard Pit that the record states are for navigation purposes, and a 5.9 kilometre run of embankment, wall, high ground and raised road on the Severn whose stated standard of protection is one year in one. None of them should be presented as protecting the town, and no named flood alleviation scheme for Tewkesbury with a date and a cost is published on any official source.
A mapped zone changes what a building costs to insurance and what a buyer's solicitor asks for in the management pack.
Conservation Areas and Listed Buildings in Tewkesbury
One conservation area covering 16.22 per cent of the built-up area, and its history needs both dates. The council's own appraisal records that it was designated by Gloucestershire County Council on 29 December 1969 and amended by the borough council on 6 October 1987, with an Article 4 direction confirmed on 28 October 1987. The national register carries only the 1987 amendment, so 1969 is the origin and the later date is not the designation. The appraisal was adopted on 23 February 2012, updating a 2005 study with surveys carried out in 2010. It covers most of the historic core together with a substantial area of water meadow between the Severn and the Mill Avon known as The Ham.
367 entries on the National Heritage List fall inside the built-up area, seven Grade I, 42 Grade II* and 317 Grade II. That Grade II* share, 11.4 per cent, is the highest of any town covered in this county, and it matches what the council's appraisal says qualitatively: nearly every building lining the three main streets is listed, and although many are Grade II there are a significant number at Grade II*. Three scheduled monuments sit inside the town, which the appraisal itself names as the ground around the abbey, the site of Holm Castle and Queen Margaret's Camp.
Consent has to precede the Section 20 specification, not follow it, or leaseholders are consulted on work that cannot lawfully be done as described.
Radon in Tewkesbury
The lowest reading of any town covered in this county, by a wide margin, and the geology explains it: this is Severn vale alluvium and Lias clay rather than limestone. Class 2 covers 99.4 per cent of the built-up area at 1 to 3 per cent of homes at or above the action level, with a single class 3 square accounting for the remaining 0.6 per cent. Against Minchinhampton twenty miles south, where nearly half the town reads the top band, the contrast is about as sharp as it gets within one county.
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.
Licensing and Permitted Development in Tewkesbury
An Article 4 direction covers 7.01 per cent of the built-up area, the only such direction reaching any of the larger Gloucestershire towns covered here. Its date is recorded differently in two places and the council's own document should be preferred: the appraisal states it was confirmed on 28 October 1987, while the national register gives 1 June 1988. What it removes and which streets it covers are not published anywhere: the council's document is a five page scan with no text layer and the schedule appears nowhere else. The 2012 appraisal lists as outstanding work the extension of the Article 4 boundary to reflect the revised conservation area boundary and amendment of its provisions, which is consistent with the direction covering 7 per cent of the town against a conservation area covering 16 per cent. So a building can sit inside the conservation area and outside the direction, and the council has to be asked which.
Two permissions get confused here. The council's requirements are public law and apply whatever the lease says; consent under the lease is private law and applies whatever the council says. A leaseholder letting a flat usually needs both.
Planning Policy That Affects Flats in Tewkesbury
Two adopted documents apply: the Joint Core Strategy for Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, adopted by all three councils in December 2017, and the Tewkesbury Borough Plan 2011 to 2031, adopted on 8 June 2022 at a special meeting of the council. A replacement strategic and local plan shared with Cheltenham and Gloucester is in preparation with no dated milestone published. There is no made neighbourhood plan for the town: ten plans have been made across the borough, at Alderton, Churchdown and Innsworth, Twyning, Winchcombe and Sudeley and elsewhere, but Tewkesbury town is not among them and the council records that no plan is currently at publication consultation or at referendum anywhere in the borough. Tewkesbury is not in a National Landscape at all: the built-up area has zero overlap with any of them, and the nearest Cotswolds boundary is 3.03 kilometres away.
Policy in an adopted plan is not guidance. It is what the application is decided against, and a consent granted under the lease does not substitute for it or vice versa.
Changing Managing Agent in Tewkesbury
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 Tewkesbury 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 .
Tewkesbury Questions
Which Council Does a Block in Tewkesbury Deal With?
Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Building Control, shared with Cheltenham Borough Council. A district council, with the county council above it for county functions.
Who Enforces Fire Safety in the Common Parts in Tewkesbury?
Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service, as the enforcing authority for the Fire Safety Order.
Who Supplies Water to a Development in Tewkesbury?
Severn Trent 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 Tewkesbury?
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 Tewkesbury.
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