Service charges

Invoices for annual charges

If you own the lease of a property, you must pay your share of the landlord's costs. This includes maintaining and repairing the structure and the common parts of your building, as well as management costs. These costs are known as the annual service charges. There is also an annual charge for building insurance. Some leaseholders must also pay ground rent.

Annual service charges are invoiced on an estimated basis in advance of the year ahead. We will invoice you for what we think it will cost to provide services from April to next March. When the actual cost of services is known (around mid-year), your service charge account will be adjusted. This will result in a credit or debit to your account. We will write to tell you about this.

If we estimated your share of the service charges at £200, but the actual cost was £100, your account would be credited £100.

If we estimated your share of the annual service charges at £200, but the actual cost was £300, we would adjust your account. You would owe £100 more.

Overview of service charge calculations

Invoices for major works schemes

Major works are large one-off works of repair, improvement or redecoration to the structure, external or communal areas of a block. This may include:

• renewing doors and windows
• repairing or renewing roofs
• replacing lifts
• renewing fascias and guttering

Our Investment Programme will benefit all our residents. You will not pay for work inside tenants' homes. However, you must pay your share of the costs for work on communal fixtures, fittings, and the building's exterior.

Major works invoices are payable within 21 days. If not, we offer various payment options for major works (Excel doc, 13 KB).

Payment methods

We have a range of options to pay your service charges.

Difficulties in paying service charges

Tell us if you are having difficulty paying your service charges. We can tell you about any financial help you may be entitled to, including help from The Department for Work and Pensions. No matter how difficult your financial circumstances may seem, we will work with you to help get your service charge account back on track.

You can get free debt advice from the National Debtline (opens new window) and free benefit advice from the Gov.uk benefits calculators (opens new window).

Non-payment of service charges

We will contact you if your account falls into arrears. We'll tell you how much you owe. We'll explain how and when to pay, in full or in instalments.

If you're finding it difficult to keep up with your payments, let us know. We can help you:

• look at the money you have coming in and the money you have going out
• apply for all the welfare benefits you are entitled to

We will start legal action if you:

• don't seek help with your debt, like speaking to your mortgage lender or bank
• don't agree to a repayment arrangement to clear your arrears
• don't keep to an agreement you made with us to pay by instalments

Legal action may lead to a court order against you to pay the debt. A record of the court order will be kept for six years, unless you pay the debt within one month. This may affect your ability to obtain credit.

If you do not comply with the court order, we will ask the court for permission to enforce the order. This might include:

• deducting debt from your salary
• securing a charge for the debt against your property
• removing your possessions and selling them to repay the debt
• selling your property to pay the debt or ending your lease and repossessing the property

If you have money problems, talk to us straight away. Do not ignore the situation.

If you think your charges are wrong

Call us on 0191 433 5353.

We'll send you a detailed breakdown of how we calculated your charges. If you still think some service charge items are wrong, let us know. We'll be happy to meet you or talk on the phone.

If this does not resolve the issue, please write to us. Explain which part of your service charge you are challenging and why. We will investigate and write to you within ten working days. If we think it is going to take longer, we will let you know.

Please pay your bills while we investigate. Charges can be removed from your service charge account for any of these reasons:

• a service has not been provided
• a service falls below our standards
• a part of the service charge is not recoverable by law

If we reject your dispute, we will explain our reasoning. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can take your dispute to an independent tribunal. We will provide details of this service and the Leasehold Advisory Service (a free legal advice service) when we write to you.

First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber)

The First-tier Tribunal resolves leaseholder-landlord disputes.

It can:

• check if a service or admin charge is due. This applies to a service charge that has already been paid
• vary a lease that lacks a proper service charge clause
• decide whether to skip or change the landlord's rule. It requires consulting leaseholders before major works and recharging them for it via the service charge
• award costs where a leaseholder or landlord has acted unreasonably

Residential property: Northern region

1^st Floor
Piccadilly Exchange
2 Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4AH
United Kingdom

Tel: 0161 237 9491
Email: rpnorthern@justice.co.uk
Website: First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) (opens new window)