By Francesco Guerrieri
Housing maintenance issues and service charge disputes are among the most challenging aspects of being a resident in the UK today. Many leaseholders, council tenants, and housing association residents face similar frustrations: steadily increasing service charges with little transparency about how funds are being spent; maintenance requests that go unanswered for months; poor quality repairs when they do happen; and a general sense of powerlessness when dealing with unresponsive management companies or housing providers.
However, UK housing policy has evolved to provide several alternatives that allow residents to take greater control over the management of their properties. This article explores how one SHAC member managed to take control over his building’s maintenance and service charges by acquiring the Right to Manage (RtM). It also gives a basic overview of Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) and Social Housing Cooperatives (SHCs) as alternative options available to dissatisfied residents who wish to take back control over their building.
Fifteen Years of Frustration
My story as leaseholder goes back to 2010, when I bought the two-bedroom flat I currently live in. I love my flat and the area it’s in, but my landlord, one of the larger housing associations, has made it very difficult for me and my neighbours to truly enjoy where we live.
Every year, we have to watch helplessly as service charges creep higher. Just last week we received the service charges estimates for 2025/26: an increase of 41% compared to the 2023/24 actuals.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the service keeps getting worse. Maintenance requests to repair leaky roofs or broken lifts and mouldy hallways disappear into a black hole of bureaucracy. When repairs do happen, they are often slapdash, with me and my neighbours needing to call contractors again and again to fix the same issue.
For years, we have challenged our landlord’s service charges and demanded more transparency, better building maintenance and improved communication. Our residents association has been very helpful in putting pressure on our landlord’s top management and board. Our Councillor too has been incredibly supportive, but the reality is that concretely very little can be done to hold housing associations accountable.
Just when I had lost pretty much all hope, last summer I discovered a piece of legislation called Right to Manage (RtM). Introduced in 2002 through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act, RtM gives residents the right to take control over the maintenance of their building and their expenses. In other words, under RtM residents have:
- The freedom to choose their own property management company and contractors
- The freedom from uncertainty over future demands from their landlord
- The freedom to bring their building to a better standard without interference from their landlord
- The power to ensure their building is properly maintained
- A future where building managers work with residents as a team
In other words, RtM shifts the power away from the landlord and freeholder, over to residents. It fosters democracy and empowers those with the highest level of interest (residents) to be in charge of their building and their expenses.
RtM is the closest any leaseholder or shared owner can get to owning a freehold, without having to buy the freehold (a complex and expensive exercise). If you follow the news, you will know that the government is working on eliminating the feudal leasehold system and replacing it with commonhold.
Well, RtM is conceptually the same as commonhold, except that the freeholder remains in place and leaseholders have to continue to abide by their lease (for example by paying a ground rent). But the freeholder is no longer allowed to maintain a building under RtM, or to collect any service charges.
The moment I discovered RtM I knew that it was a game changer, so I decided to invest all my time into researching it. Fast forward half a year, and my neighbours and I are now close to acquiring the RtM for our building. Here’s how I did it.
From Frustration to Empowerment
RtM is a process, and like any process, it consists of a series of steps which need to be followed more or less diligently. At a high level, this is what I went through to acquire RtM for my building:
Step 1: Door-knocking activity
The first thing I did was to make sure that our building met the RtM eligibility criteria:
- The building must contain at least 2 flats and be self-contained, i.e. not share any physical structure – for example an underground car park – with a neighbouring building (sharing services is usually fine).
- Non-residential areas must not exceed 50% of the total floor area
- At least 67% of the flats must be owned by long leaseholders (leases of more than 21 years when first granted)
The third criterion is the more time-consuming one. Armed with a clipboard and determination, I spent evenings knocking on every door in my block to find out about their tenure and to capture their email address. At first, I felt intimidated by the idea of having to ask strangers for this information, but surprisingly, most neighbours welcomed the conversation. In fact, many offered their help with the door knocking, others asked me to put them down as volunteers once we had acquired RtM.
Many neighbours had horror stories to share about their interactions with our landlord, and some neighbours literally jumped for joy when I told them about RtM. Everybody felt a sense of relief in knowing that there was a way out. In just 2-3 weeks, I had completed the task. More importantly, I built a relationship with many interesting and like-minded people and gained their trust in the process. For me, this felt like the first step in creating a true community in our block, and it felt really good.
Step 2: Explaining RtM to my neighbours
Most of my neighbours had never heard of RtM. To demystify it, I wrote a plain-English guide explaining what RtM is and isn’t, how it benefits the building, but also some of the potential challenges that come with it.
I emailed each resident a copy of the RtM guide. The response was immediate: many neighbours replied thanking me for the work; some others stopped me in the hallway to ask questions. The mood shifted from resignation to hope.
Step 3: Winning support for RtM
As a next step, I ran a poll to make sure that everybody was clear on the concept of RtM and that I had enough support from them to continue with this initiative. If anybody had questions or concerns, I would get in touch with them to discuss them.
The result was amazing: 92% of respondents voted in favour of pursuing RtM. One neighbour messaged: “This is the first time in years I’ve felt we might actually change things.”
Step 4: Bringing in the experts
With momentum building, I hired RtM specialists to handle the legal heavy lifting, including:
- Forming an RtM company with Companies House
- Drafting the formal Claim Notice to our landlord
- Getting residents to formally register as members of the RtM company (legally at least 50% of registrations are needed)
- Managing the transfer of powers and provisions from our landlord to the RtM company
At the same time, I appointed a Property Management Company to maintain our building.
Together with two neighbours, I became a director of the RtM company. Our job now is to manage the Property Management Company we appointed (it reports to us residents now, now the other way round!) and to set the budget for our building, with the help of the Property management Company.
Step 5: Enjoying RtM
Our building is set to take over from our landlord in July and we can’t wait for it. We have lots of plans for our building and were able to turn them into reality once we acquired the RtM. For example, we plan to change the old and damaged floor in our lobby and buy parcel boxes to eliminate the problem of parcel theft; we want to repaint the staircase in a different, much livelier colour so that our hallways don’t look like a hospital anymore.
We will change the locks on some common doors with new, more robust ones. We plan to get a bike repair area in place in one of our bike sheds and turn one of the common rooms into a bulk waste disposal area, and much more. The best thing about all this? We don’t need to ask our landlord for permission for any of this – we can simply get on with it.
What I learned from my RtM journey
- As the leaseholder who leads your building to acquire the RtM, your job is effectively to campaign for RtM, so communication with your neighbours is critical. Make sure you always keep them up-to-date and in the know. This helps to build trust, which is crucial when it comes to convincing your neighbours to vote in favour of RtM.
- RtM is not just about acquiring RtM. It is also about building a community. The more you involve your neighbours, the more they will want to help and the more they will feel vested into RtM. Consider organising drinks for everyone to celebrate milestones along your RtM journey. It’s a great way to get neighbours to know each other and form a bond. This is the foundation of any community.
- Don’t be scared! Acquiring the RtM is a fantastic solution for leaseholders who are tired of their landlord’s failings. Yet many leaseholders I spoke to fear taking the lead on it for their building.
Demistifying Common Fears
Here’s my attempt to demystify some of the most common fears that leaseholders seem to have with regards to RtM:
- “I don’t have time to lead the building in transitioning to RtM or to be a director of the RtM company”.
Whilst acquiring the Right to Manage does require devoting a bit of time to it, the really time-consuming phase is the initial one, i.e. getting hold of people’s tenure and email address. If you don’t think you have enough time to knock on your neighbours’ doors, then simply drop a flyer into their mailboxes.
When it comes to being a director of the RtM company, you might not need to be one! Several people in my building volunteered to become directors and I’m sure the same will happen in yours. In any case, being a director doesn’t require more than an hour or two a month and it’s mainly administrative work – you don’t need any special skills to be a director.
- “How am I supposed to manage a building my size? I know nothing about building maintenance!”.
The good news is that you don’t need to. The Property Management Company you appoint will take care of it all. You simply need to make sure that they perform to your standards.
- “There is a lot of apathy in my building, nobody wants to help”.
In any building, particularly in larger blocks, apathy is an issue. It is human nature to piggyback on other people’s work. This was also the case in my building, yet on our RtM journey we have really bonded and got to know each other, forming a lovely little community. Many more people are now helping each other out because RtM made them feel empowered.
- “Will RtM be any better than the situation we’re in now?”
There are plenty of case studies that prove that RtM is a great solution. But the truth is that you won’t know that until you try it. RtM isn’t a magic wand. There will be challenges with it too. But ultimately RtM empowers you to take control, which is essential.
If you’re unhappy with the Property Management Company you selected, then simply appoint a new one! And in the absolute worst case scenario, if you realise that you really don’t like your situation after you acquire the RtM (although the chances of that happening are extremely low!), you can always hand back the management of your building to your landlord. At least you can say you tried.
- “Will RtM end up costing us much more in service charges?”
Not at all. On the contrary, most RtM companies manage to reduce service charges by about 15% on average thanks to better, more proactive building maintenance, more transparency, and no artificially inflated contracts.
Further reading on RtM:
Beyond RtM: Other Paths to Liberation
RtM was developed to help leaseholders and shared owners. But what if you are a council tenant or a low-income individual seeking affordable housing options? The law caters for them too.
Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs)
If you’re a council or housing association tenant, RtM isn’t an option—but TMOs are. Similar to RtM, a TMO lets you take over day-to-day management (repairs, cleaning) of your building, while the council retains ownership.
How it works:
- Form a resident-led committee
- Negotiate a management agreement with your landlord
- Control budgets and contractors
Similar to RtM, most TMOs report significantly reduced repair wait times and lower service charges.
Further reading:
Social Housing Cooperatives
For those wanting total autonomy, cooperatives let residents collectively own and manage their homes. Think of it as a democratic housing model:
- No landlords: Members own the cooperative.
- Affordable rents: Set to cover costs, not profits or surpluses.
- Community focus: One co-op in Hackney runs a communal garden and childcare collective.
The catch? You need to secure funding (often government grants) and property. But groups like Radical Routes offer support.
Further reading:
- Cooperatives UK: Housing co-operatives: an overview
You Have the Power
When I started this process, I was just another frustrated leaseholder. Today, I’m a director of an RtM company with 80 neighbours backing me. If I managed to do it for a large building block, so can you.
- Start small: Talk to one neighbour. Then another. Momentum builds faster than you think.
- Educate yourself: Check out the internet for resources on RtM, TMOs or Social Housing Cooperatives, there is plenty of information out there.
- Sign up to EasyRtM: To help leaseholders on their journey to RtM, I have developed a toolkit called EasyRtM and made it available for free for anyone interested. EasyRtM includes an in-depth guide on RtM, a fully-fledged project plan, tips on how to identify reliable and trustworthy legal advisors and property management companies, and all email communication to send to residents. Sign up here for access.
- Find allies: Retirees, stay-at-home parents, or even that neighbour you’ve never spoken to — they might become your strongest supporters.
For years, my neighbours and I felt trapped in a system designed to sideline residents. But RtM taught me that taking the initiative and organising collective action works.
By taking control of your housing situation — whether through RtM, a TMO, or a cooperative — you’re not just improving your own living conditions; you’re also contributing to a movement that demands fairness, transparency, and respect for residents across the country.
You don’t have to accept the status quo. Change isn’t just possible, it’s within reach. So take the first step. Knock on the first door. Write the first email. Your community and your home are worth fighting for. When residents unite with a shared vision for better housing, the possibilities are truly inspiring. The power to make a difference is in your hands.
11 April 2025
If you have a WordPress account, get notifications about new articles by subscribing below: