About Service Charges | Managing Agents
Service charges are payments made by the lessee to the landlord for the services that may from time to time be provided.lThese services can include maintenance and repairs, building insurance, and in some cases, central heating provision, porterage, lifts, lighting as well as cleaning of common areas, gardening of grounds and so on.
Service charges can vary year to year. charges can go up or down, yet they still need to be reasonable.
The lease will set out the fraction of the cost or percentage that the leaseholder needs to pay and the accounting period to which the landlord must produce annual accounts highlighting expenditure and service charge payments.
Thge lease will specify details of what the landlord can and cannot charge and the proportion of the charge to be paid by the individual leaseholder will be set out in the lease
The landlord usually provides all of the services, and the lessee will pay for them through the service charge account.
The cost for all repairs and services required to the block are met by the lessees with the landlord generally not making any financial contribution. The majority of modern leases allow landlords to collect service charges in advance whilst reimbursing any surplus or collecting any shortfall at the end of the year.
The landlord is able to recover all reasonable costs. a lessee has the right to challenge service charges they consider to be unreasonable by applying to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT). If you apply to the LVT you will need to provide evidence as to why you consider any costs or charges to be unreasonable. The LVT is a completely independant body that will look at dispute and make it's decision on evidence provided by the lessee and the Landlord, or his agents.
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