Sovereign Reviews 266

2 years awaiting my bathroom to be fixed. 5 cancelled appointments (appreciate covid has been an issue) but this takes the biscuit. My self employed husband is now taking time off to sort out the awful situation. I feel like i have been treated like a second class citizen. No care and their complaints procedure is pointless. They are fantastic at reminding you of overdue rent. My only idea is stop paying rent in order to get some action! I am appalled at the treatment and can't really afford legal advice??? any help from anyone on how I can take action against this so say housing association would be very much appreciated. My husband has had to have a total of 4 days off to sort our bathroom out as i will be waiting forever for sovereign to even attempt to help.

Does anyone live on a Sovereign Park home site? We are looking to buy a property on one but after reading reviews not to sure now. Any information would be greatly appreciated

Worst housing association ever, all they care is their rent paid. Live with my 4 kids as a single dad and the bathrooms tiles been off over 2 years and cut my kids many times. Taps are leaking, mound in at kitchen cupboards. Can go on and on. Someone has to do something about this sovereign company

Think there a joke i have 2 young kids and ive been waiting for a tap to be fixed now 12 weeks now no drinking water i will have to inform social services as sovereign has naglected my kids and mp will be informed as ive had it with them now for 7 years or so was living with a unsafe boiler i will be going for compensation for the stress and neglected.

Been waiting nearly a year to have my garage roof fixed as it’s leaking, they kept cancelling my appointment on the day with numerous excuses . Had 3 men turn up in the end to fix it and they spent more time chatting just waisting time. Checked what they have done after they left and there’s gaps in the roofing which won’t stop it from leaking, looks like cowboy builders to me.

Sovereign are absolutely awful we moved into a part buy part rent with sovereign we had and still have problems with the property a year on!! They are useless can’t be assed to anything they are happy to take the money every month but can’t be bothered to reply to emails answer the phone and when they do hardly say anything and it’s being reviewed we will get in touch with you to arrange it to be fixed and never do. Unprofessional and will not be recommending them to anyone. Absolutely appalling!!!

We bought our shared ownership house back in 2018 and from memory the buying process was fine.
Fast forward to 2021 when we sold our property - a catalogue of errors and utterly awful communication throughout the whole process meant we lost out on 2 houses! Excessive fees for quite literally NOTHING.

We had FOUR buyers in total for our property, with three of them dropping out due to various reasons. Now we understand fully, sovereign can’t be blamed for a property falling through due to buyers dropping out however, what they can be blamed for is extreme delays and quite frankly, the shambolic service in between.
When I tried to phone them to actually speak to someone, a 20 minute + wait was pretty normal. On one occasion, a buyer who applied for our property and had multiple viewings, they LOST her application and after several weeks of her calling for an update, it was the next buyer that informed me when they spoke to sovereign no one else had actually applied. The lady who had initially been interested called sovereign to ask what was going on and proceeded to raise a complaint with them for this, she also had a very bad experience of one of Sovereigns recommended financial advisors, with him putting incorrect information on her assessment which caused further delays and inconvenience for both parties.
Unfortunately, her property sale fell through due to her buyer dropping out which meant she had to withdraw from our sale, she informed sovereign of this and due to how awful their communication is, it took them A WEEK (!!) to actually decide to tell us that she had dropped out of our property, even though we had been told the property sale was still going through fine, when we phoned up to check how things were progressing. When this error was established, We made our feelings very well known on this and how we felt this was completely unacceptable, and sub standard service. They acknowledged this and said they would endeavour to try and push things through as quickly as possible for us.

At the end of this process we raised a complaint with one of the team leaders, he assured us twice that he would look into this and get back to us the next working day. In the end, it took him a WEEK to even respond to our complaint, even after us having to chase up numerous times, which just shows the type of company they are, as clearly complaints are not a priority for them. The end response was that they could not see they did anything wrong and will close the case down. We tried calling back several times to challenge it but again, trying to get hold of them is virtually impossible. They had incorrect dates and versions of events that actually happened which led them to their incorrect conclusion.

For us, the shared ownership process is a great one in order to get yourself on the property ladder and helped us do that. Having said that, PLEASE DO NOT USE SOVEREIGN FOR THIS! You have virtually no support when trying to sell your property, you have to take your own pictures and write up when you come to market it, you arrange your own viewings, all enquiries are to you. They do not even send any emails or a courtesy phone call to ask how your getting on throughout this whole, completely new, confusing process. It seems that because they are not estate agents and are going to get their sale fees anyway, they simply do not care and that is how we felt from most advisors there. They charged us £1200 for “sellers fees”, which to us is an actual insult and is disgusting due to the fact, they do absolutely NOTHING to justify that. There has been no acknowledgement, no apology for the extra time, stress and worry this cause to us as a young family trying to buy and sell their house.

We would not recommend sovereign to anyone and will be informing Google, Facebook and every social media outlet of our disgraceful experience with them and to avoid them at all costs.

** I haven’t received any emails/messages Michelle? **

I live in Boyce Court TQ2 7EW which is managed by Sovereign. They made an unauthorised deduction from my payslip for an inappropriate rent payment without my consent. I have now paid twice for the same month. I was told last week that I would get my money back but I still haven't received it. How long does it take to do a simple bank transaction? I think it should be illegal for private companies to simply take money from people's payslips without their consent.

New Update 23rd Nov

Corey please ignore my 'Thank you' and the Residents are grateful' comments below.

The vehicles that had been removed have been brought back today, totally unbelievable.

I know Sovereign has a general census of being a shower but this totally shocking!

If anyone wants to store a car with no Tax, MOT or Insurance then Sovereign car parks is the place to put them for permanant storage.

Just wondering who foots the bill for having the vehicles picked up then a few days later broght back ?

Well if you can't beat them join them, think I'll advertise car storage on FB at £10 per week and offer a valet service to come and pickup your car for storage, looks like a nice little earner.

I can confirm Sovereign are a shower and if a wolf cries mental health then they leave you well alone.

................................................................................

Abandoned 5 vehicles in car park…Update !
It's taken a little time but 4 of the 5 vehicles have now been removed and the residents are grateful..Thank you

Unfortunately the TR7 thats coming up to it's 9 years anniversary of being in the same place and rotting on the spot is still there.

I understand the owner who is a serial car dumper in XChurch and runs his taxi, removals, airport pickup service and garage services from the car park says it's a vintage car that doesn't require an MOT or Tax dues to the cars age but its taking a space up and it totally unroadworthy.

Corey please pass our thanks on for removing some of the vehicles but the icing on the cake would be the TR7 being removed before the Queen sends it 100 year old birthday card.

Thank you

whats the point, you 'll just get a answer like this - all the same.

nothing will come of your issue!

I'm sorry to hear you feel this way. I've sent you a PM asking for further information so we can get this looked into for you. Many Thanks, Michelle

My wife and I have been Sovereign tenants for approx 11 years now. We became tenants after Sovereign bought our house as a mortgage rescue. They sent an "officer" to our house who told us that they were more than landlords and would be there to help us whatever the problem. We were told that in the future if our circumstances changed we could buy our house back. I tried, it was a lie. I was told that whomsoever told me that was wrong and we have no right to "buy back" our house.
We have also had an ongoing issue with a council hedge at the side of our house being overgrown to a huge extent. So far Sovereign have been as useful as a chocolate fireguard in helping get this sorted even though it has, and continues, to cause numerous health problems.
All this landlord cares about is getting their rent. To call them a social housing body is an insult to anyone who has a social conscious. They are very little more than a regular landlord who has a captive market generated by the lack of local authority investment.
In essence; they lie; they do nothing; they pass everything onto "the relevent people" who never seem to get back and their modus operandi is to string you along for so long that you lose hope and stop bothering them with your problems and live with it.
Very sad that this is what passes for acceptable these days.

Moved into a new build a few years ago. Constant problems with the lift since day one. The roof somehow got damaged within the first 2 years to the point we had an unplanned waterfall in the stairwell.
Repairs take ages to happen.

Then this year with one month’s notice increased our service charge by £140 A MONTH. No explanation given for it until demanded from them - and they couldn’t even get that response to us within their promised response time.

Turns out it was for flytipping, yet from what I can see despite being warned about this issue repeatedly in the first few months of people moving in and being urged to secure the bin area and install surveillance of it have failed to do so - guess it’s easier for them to not bother and just squeeze their tenants for everything they can.

Also despite a yearly inspection of my flat where allegedly smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms were checked failed to realise that the mains power to my alarms had never been switched on! So they only had battery power. For 3 years! Worrying when an alleged safety inspection fails to find basic things like that.

Shoddy builds, expensive charges and useless support services. Posting this again here because I apparently left my review on the unofficial Sovereign review thing (which also has terrible scores)

If you're thinking of buying/renting a property and Sovereign are in any involved, RUN AWAY AND DON'T LOOK BACK. You don't need this bunch of incompetent clowns in your life. They have caused me nothing but stress and anxiety every time I have to deal with them.

Forcing tenants to foot the bill to improvements of property they don't own, worse yet, 'improvements' that are about removing illegal health-and-safety risks. I am so glad to have gotten a £130 increase in rent within the space of a day for my tiny, damp moldy box of a room. These people should be ashamed.

My parents live in a Sovereign property and have been told that they must pay an extra £30 a month for their service charge which apparently is for the upkeep of the lawn and shrubs around the block of flats. The groundsmen have been to the property 4 times in the last 12 months. The estimate for the cost was £102 for the year and this has shot up, yet there have been consistent complaints from all the residents at the property about the poor state of the grounds leading to several residents doing the work themselves. The property manager visited the block and told residents that, due to the poor services, their service charge would be reduced, yet here we are with a £30 a month increase for all flats. Frankly its a disgusting way to deceive and swindle vulnerable people. Residents have written to Sovereign to complain and tried to call them, but to no avail - there has been no response whatsoever except my mother receiving a text to tell her that Sovereign were going to take the extra £30 a month from November. The company give me absolutely no choice but to begin the process of a tribunal - The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (as amended) states that a service charge is only recoverable by a landlord so far as the costs have been reasonably incurred. Also, it states that it is only recoverable if works carried out for the charge are of a reasonable standard. As such we will be fighting this and making statements to local and national press about the awful treatment of elderly residents.

Sovereign Housing officers are corrupt incompetent lazy oafs. I have repeatedly called them about neighbours and their cronies on my estate harassing me and unless I have video evidence, which is impossible to obtain due to their fellow liars watching their backs whenever I try to, they do literally nothing. But moving plant pots to prevent neighbours children destroying my property, and they instantly slap me with an anti social behaviour order. Sovereign housing needs to be shut down. They refuse to do their jobs. A neighbour has stolen half of the bike sheds for her own purposes and instead of checking the cupboard, I watched on my camera as they just sat there slandering me with my neighbours. Scum is too kind a word for Sovereign Officers.

So contacted sovereign regarding a tenant leaving a cat when leaving the property. There response was really poor, told us to contact the RSPCA. If they read there requirements this does not include abandoned cats or strays. There attitude was that they are just landlords, so take no responsibility of an animal that is slowly loosing weight. Really poor attitude, don’t care if this animal dies. Due to having dogs we are unable to take it in . Also very poor of the tenants to just leave it. Shows what sort of people they are like. So angry will be reporting them to the council

So you have sent be a PM ??? !! Have not received anything

communication from the accommodation is awful. My flat has had a broken lock on it, I have chased up for 4 days now and no one has done anything about it. It’s disgusting and I feel unsafe. Don’t stay here

my mrs moved in flat they have in old market cause she didn't have a choice there for like an year 3 months its being a nightmare shes on the 1st floor and the guy ids on ground floor imagine living in place where you have to tell your 2 old son not to get excited not to run in the flat he even came upstairs beating her down frightening her and my son rang sovereign and the only thing they say its not big enough of an issue so you telling someone pay rent and asking you for your help jus to move from that situation with there 2 kids and you telling them its not serious enough of an issue and the only reason i haven't take matters in my own hands is because I'm not going to sit in prison for some waste of space and spend my life missing out on my kids growing up so tell me how that make sense wake up in the morning first thing u smell is weed like wat the hell how can you say u there for people and all you care about is the amount of money you make when you go back home to nice peaceful house and your kids can do whatever they want like if was in the position i wouldn't be renting a house so some help would be nice even though i know you guys just can see this and act like you dont.

A terrible housing authority
They ignore you❗️
Do not repaire drains and external areas around property.
They closed our local housing officers.