This top tip has come in from one of our members who wishes to remain anonymous so that they don’t blow their cover and ruin the tranquility that they have created in their communal hallway at the moment. May it never end!

We received an email from this member (we’ll call them Jo) a few weeks ago that read, “A few of my neighbours keep leaving push chairs, bikes and other stuff that they cant be bothered to carry up to their flat in our communal hallway. This is steadily becoming a total nightmare for me especially when I am trying to navigate around it all with bags of shopping in my hands to get to the top floor. I am new to my block so I don’t want to upset anyone but is there anything I can do to make people aware how annoying this is?”. We contacted ‘Jo’ to give some advice but in the end it seems that Jo has found a good way of getting residents to listen.

We explained to Jo that for Fire and Safety reasons all communal hallways should be kept clear and are no place to store bikes and the other items that Jo mentioned to us. We suggested the best thing to do was to write a polite but firm note to all residents of your block explaining that the items created a fire hazard and should be removed from the hallway. Pin the note to the notice board in the hallway and wait a few days to see if this has any effect.

Jo took our advice and hand wrote a simple note that he attached to his notice board. Although a few people took notice and removed their items, one disgruntled resident decided to reply to Jo’s note by pinning up their own basically saying ‘GET LOST’! This was obviously not a good result and pretty discouraging for Jo.

We then recommended that Jo contact the management company of the block and explain what was happening, they should be aware of the laws surrounding Fire and Safety and would hopefully make sure that all residents were aware that items should not be left in the hallway. Jo did this straight away but after 2 weeks still nothing had been done by his management company to try and resolve the problem.

Jo was close to giving up on this and just cave in to the fact that they were powerless to make a change in their block. We told Jo not to give up and just give it one last ditch attempt by writing another letter and pinning it to the notice board explaining the Fire and Safety issue.

Whilst on a lunch break Jo decided to write an “official looking” letter on his computer to all residents and even did a google search for Fire and Safety rules which Jo copied and pasted onto the letter. As Jo was in the office he thought it best to make the most of office resources and even laminated 4 copies of the letter (one for each floor). What Jo ended up with looked like an official letter that might have been written by the management company and  within 5 days of posting it up on each floor nearly all of the clutter was gone and Jo was free to walk the hallway without risking injury.

Jo we salute you and we hope that everyone realises that they do have the power to make people listen. Just keep persisting and make sure your message reads well enough and looks good enough to get noticed.