Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether, and to what extent, freeholders breach their statutory obligations to provide leaseholders with accounts they are entitled to receive; and whether they have any plans to take action against freeholders who breach obligations to leaseholders.

The provision of service charge accounts is a matter between leaseholders and freeholders and so no such assessment has been made. We do, however, believe very strongly that service charges should be transparent, communicated effectively and that there should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong.

Leaseholders are entitled under Section 21 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to require their landlord to supply them with a written summary of costs which have been incurred in the last complete service year period and the landlord must comply with the request within one month. The Act also entitles leaseholders who have received such a summary to require the landlord to allow them to inspect the documents supporting the summary. The landlord must comply with that request within two months. Failure to comply with these obligations without reasonable excuse is a summary offence punishable with a fine.

On 1 April, we published the response to our recent call for evidence on ‘Protecting consumers in the letting and managing agent market’. Here proposals include establishing a working group to consider how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers and to explore the best means to challenge fees which are unjustified. As part of this work, consideration will also be given to standards around service charges and how to include them in a statutory code of practice.