It really depends what your lease says about who is responsible for maintaining common areas, but it would be highly unusual if, in the case of leasehold flats, it was left to the responsibility of the lessees. In reality, landlords delegate the task of maintaining the common areas of flats to a management company, to whom you would pay a regular service charge. Do you pay a service charge? If so, contact the people you pay the service charge to as they will be responsible for looking after communal areas and arranging things like gardening and window cleaning. When you purchased the property, your solicitor should have told you about the arrangements (or lack of) in place to deal with maintenance of communal areas. Assuming you have a mortgage, your lender would have needed to be satisfied that there were appropriate maintenance arrangements in place, otherwise lenders will naturally be reluctant to lend on a property that is likely to be ill maintained. If you have no luck finding out who is responsible for maintaining your communal areas, it would be worth getting in touch with the solicitor who dealt with the conveyancing of your flat for advice. At this stage, I certainly wouldn't take the risk of arranging any works to the communal areas of the property yourself. You risk landing yourself with a hefty bill which none of your neighbours will contribute to.