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A big service charge bill is not automatically a bill you owe

Where major works will cost any leaseholder more than £250, the landlord has to consult properly first. If they did not, and the tribunal does not excuse it, they can recover £250 from each leaseholder and no more, whatever the work actually cost.

These are hard rules with dates attached rather than matters of opinion. This walks through them. Nothing is uploaded and it runs in your browser.

The demand
For the whole block, not just your share
Or when the cost was incurred
What happened
Answer what you can. Unsure is a useful answer, because it tells you what to go and look for rather than what to argue about.
Did you receive a Notice of Intention before the works started?Section 20
Did you get a full 30 days to respond at each stage?Section 20
Did you make observations at stage one, and were they summarised and answered at stage two?Section 20
Were there at least two estimates, with one from a contractor unconnected to the landlord?Section 20
Did the demand include a summary of your rights and obligations?Section 21B
Does your lease actually permit a charge for this item?The lease itself
Is the cost out of line with what the work should cost?Section 19
Was the work of a reasonable standard?Section 19
What you can ask for, whatever happened

These do not depend on anything having gone wrong. They are rights every leaseholder has and most never use.

A written summary of costsSection 21
You can require a written summary of the costs behind the service charge for the last accounting period. It must be provided within one month of the request or six months of the end of the period, whichever is later. Failing to provide it without reasonable excuse is a criminal offence, which is worth saying plainly in the request.
To inspect the invoicesSection 22
Within six months of getting the summary you can require facilities to inspect the actual receipts and invoices, and to take copies. This is where inflated or duplicated charges tend to become visible.
To have the tribunal decideSection 27A
Any leaseholder can apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a determination of whether a charge is payable and how much. You do not need a solicitor and the fees are modest. A clause in your lease purporting to remove this right is void, so it does not matter what the lease says about it.
To stop them charging you for their lawyersSection 20C
Ask for this in any tribunal application, always. Without a section 20C order the freeholder can add their legal costs of defending your challenge to next year’s service charge, which means winning still costs you money. It is one line in the application and leaving it out is the commonest own goal.
To take over the managementRight to Manage
If the problem is the managing agent rather than one bill, leaseholders can take over management of the block collectively without having to prove fault. It is a bigger undertaking than a single challenge but it is the answer to a pattern rather than an incident.
Then actually do something about it

Knowing you have a point and being able to press it are different things. These challenges run for months, across letters, meetings and eventually a tribunal application, and the leaseholder who kept a dated record is the one who is believed.

It also works considerably better as a block than as one flat, and most people have no idea how to get their neighbours involved.

The opening letter
Requests the statement of costs under section 21 and notes that refusing it without reasonable excuse is an offence. Lists your specific points.
A consultation timeline
What should have happened against what did, with the dates side by side. This is the document that makes a defect obvious.
An evidence log
Every letter, call and meeting, dated. Printable as one record at the end.
Year on year tracking
Your service charge across several years. A pattern is often a stronger argument than one bill.
A summary for neighbours
One page to put through doors. A block acting together carries far more weight and shares the cost.
Tribunal preparation
What a section 27A application needs, what it costs, and the section 20C order people forget to ask for.
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Before you do anything else, speak to LEASE

The Leasehold Advisory Service is funded by government and advises leaseholders free of charge at lease-advice.org. They will tell you whether an application is worth making, which is worth knowing before you pay anybody, including us. There are more free tools for homeowners here.

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This covers England and Wales and applies the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 as amended. Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently. It is a way of working through published rules against your own dates, not legal advice, and whether any of it applies to your particular lease is a question for somebody who has read it. LEASE, the government funded Leasehold Advisory Service, advise leaseholders free of charge at lease-advice.org and are the right first call. Withholding payment without applying to the tribunal carries risk, including forfeiture in serious cases, so take advice before deciding not to pay.

Questions

What does this do that a Section 20 calculator or a template letter does not?

A trigger calculator tells you whether consultation was required. A template letter gives you words to send. This takes the dates you actually have and checks them: whether the demand came more than eighteen months after the cost, whether each consultation stage gave you the full thirty days from service rather than from the date on the letter, and which grounds turn on a hard rule rather than an argument. Then it keeps the record as the challenge runs over months, tracks the charge year on year, and produces a page for your neighbours, because a block acting together carries far more weight than one flat.

What happens if my landlord did not follow Section 20?

Where qualifying works will cost any leaseholder more than two hundred and fifty pounds, consultation is required. If it did not happen or was defective, and the First-tier Tribunal does not grant dispensation, recovery is limited to two hundred and fifty pounds from each leaseholder regardless of what the works actually cost. On a twenty thousand pound bill that is the difference between most of it and almost none of it. The landlord has to prove they complied.

Can a service charge be too old to demand?

Yes, and it is the rule leaseholders most often do not know about. Under section 20B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, costs incurred more than eighteen months before the demand arrives are not recoverable, unless within that eighteen months the leaseholder was notified in writing that the costs had been incurred and would be demanded. A bill arriving two years after the work, with nothing in between, is frequently unrecoverable in full.

Does paying a service charge mean I have accepted it?

No. Paying a service charge does not by itself amount to agreement or admission that it was payable. A leaseholder cannot challenge a charge they have expressly agreed, but simply having paid it is not that. This matters because many people assume paying closes the question and stop looking.

Can my lease stop me going to the tribunal?

No. A term in a lease that tries to remove the tribunal jurisdiction over service charge disputes is void, with a narrow exception for arbitration agreed after a dispute has already arisen. The right to apply under section 27A cannot be signed away in advance, whatever the lease says.

What is a Section 20C order and why does it matter?

Without one, a freeholder can add the legal costs of defending your challenge to the following year service charge, which means you can win and still pay. Asking for a section 20C order is one line in a tribunal application and leaving it out is the commonest mistake leaseholders make.

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