Dani Green, Senior Associate at Brethertons LLP, answers some of the questions the team often hear surrounding service charges and communal facilities.

Depending on the size of your block, as a leaseholder you may also have access to lifts, gateways and communal lighting. These services can be a lifeline for some of your neighbours. For example, if your flat was on the seventh floor, how would you get your shopping there?  A lift can be such an important service for flat owners on higher floors.  They will also want it to be in working order all of the time.

Maybe your lease gives you the right to use a communal garden, a garden that is for you and your neighbours, not the wider world to use. The garden may be gated to prevent unwanted visitors from entering. What about getting in and out of the car park?  You don’t want the general public parking their vehicles in there. 

It’s more common for such gateways to be electronic as this can help at a management level, e.g. when someone loses their key, the locks do not need to be changed and new keys don’t need to be issued to everyone. You may also notice that communal areas inside and outside your block are lit up so that everyone can see where they are going – a simple service that can usually be taken for granted! 

Who Pays For All This?

As we all know, very little in life comes for free and, unfortunately, “simple” services like lifts, gateways and lighting don’t. 

So, who pays for these? Well, depending on the leases, it’s likely that the landlord of the block can recover the costs of providing these services and maintaining them from the leaseholders as part of a service charge. 

But I Don’t Use The Lift…

It is not uncommon for a leaseholder of a flat who potentially isn’t actively using a particular service, to feel hard done by when it comes to contributing towards its cost, for example, the leaseholder who lives on the ground floor who doesn’t need to use the lift. 

However, if the lease allows for it to be included within the service charge, it won’t matter whether a leaseholder directly benefits from it or not. This may seem a little unfair, but it would be time consuming and challenging if each lease had to be drafted in such a way so that only the services used by the leaseholder could be recovered. 

It’s likely that the costs for then calculating what should be recovered from each leaseholder could well outweigh what their share of that service would be. 

The Lift is Out of Order, The Gate is Broken and The Lights Have Blown

When it comes to the services it provides, the landlord’s duties will be set out in the lease.  They are usually to maintain and repair certain services. 

If this is not being done, you may ask what you are in fact being charged for.

Can’t We Have a New Lift or Electronic Gates?

As mentioned above, the landlord’s duties are usually to maintain and repair, not to update and improve on them. The landlord may need to carefully consider whether any replacement of services, such as a new lift or a new gateway, may actually be seen as an improvement rather than simply maintaining or repairing it.  If it is an improvement, it is unlikely that the lease will allow the landlord to recover their costs for that. 

Quite simply, although as a leaseholder you may want the very best and up to date technology, the landlord may not be able to provide this under the terms of the lease. 

Reasonableness

The landlord will still have a duty to ensure that the service charges are reasonable and that services are being maintained. 

If you have any queries about service charges, their potential unreasonableness or maintenance of services, then get in touch with Dani today to see how she can assist you: [email protected] or visit our website.