How Fairfield is Managed
Traditionally towns and villages are administered by its town or parish council and by elected councillors. This was the original intention for Fairfield and the main developer, Fairfield Redevelopments Limited (FRL), offered Stotfold Council its public assets.
Stotfold discussed this for many months but the big drawback as they saw it was the mass of mature trees surrounding our village and those the planners had preserved in developing the areas. Their minutes show that this cost was estimated at £1 million.
With time ticking away, the FRL agents attended a meeting of Stotfold Council and informed them the offer was withdrawn and instead they were going to form a series of management companies that would be responsible for the various common assets.
Hence, the many common (public) assets on Fairfield are managed by a string of managements companies. The largest of these is Fairfield Park Residents Company (FPRC) who are responsible for all the six play areas within it, plus the many greenspaces and the outside trees belts known as East, West and Southern Shelterbelts. All properties on Fairfield Park hold a share in the company which is managed for FPRC by Scanlans.
Currently the directors of FPRC are two members of the board of developers Galliford Try but they leave much of the day to day running of the Park to the Fairfield Park Residents Association (FPRA). The transfer from Galliford Try to locally elected directors has been much delayed but is now in hand and may be completed in the not too distant future.
The next largest is the Fairfield Hall Management Company (FHMC) (previously known as the Fairfield Hospital Management Company). That company manages to the common areas of the apartments, the outside maintenance of the building, and the grounds within which the hospital was built. The freehold of the area, plus the cricket, bowls clubs and the Orchards belong to an investment company, Hotbed. They have given FHMC the overall responsibility of managing the extended areas of the cricket, bowls club and the Orchards.
Fairfield Gardens will have its own management company, but developers Crest Nicholson have yet to pass this onto the residents and have employed Priem to manage it on their behalf. There is a newly formed Fairfield Gardens Steering Group that is liaising with Preim and Crest Nicholson on the transfer.
Fairfield Meadows will similarly have their own management company.
There are two smaller managements areas. Middlemarch (Nos 1-32), which is where the “industrial” area of the Three Counties Hospital was. This area was part converted to housing and part was a new area that mimicked the renovated area. This has been so well done that it is impossible to say which is new and which is old. It also included the manager’s home. Certain other outbuilding are within the Middlemarch name (nos 33-40) but come under the management of FHMC.
The area between Fairfield Mews and East Lodge (on the corner of Eliot Way) was barren land but the owners P J Livesey, (the company who bought the hospital and renovated in into apartments) successfully applied for planning permission and this area is now known as Lydgate Fields.
P J Livesey also put in a planning application to build three bungalows on land at the far end of the West orchard (between Hardy Way and Middlemarch) but gave into pressure from the parish council and agreed to instead transfer the ownership to FPC along with the part of the West Orchard that fronts Hardy Way.