By Michael Savell, SHAC Committee Member
It appears that anyone who rents a flat, or was unfortunate enough to have bought a share of a flat through shared ownership, has the same issues. High and unregulated service charges being one of the major complaints that SHAC and other campaign groups receive.
What is not generally conveyed in the media is that a large proportion of tenants pay service charges too, not just leaseholders. That is, the cost of service delivery is billed separately, and not covered through their rent payments.
If this comes as a surprise, this is likely because almost every article, whether in print, on television, or on a radio broadcast, focuses on the plight of service charge abuse for leaseholders, with little or no coverage given to tenants.
Raising Questions
I have been questioning the service charges levied by our housing association landlord since 2016, and in that time I have been interviewed by a number of newspapers and also approached by some national broadcasters. Some time ago I did an interview with BBC London, and although it was quite a long interview, only about 30 seconds made it to the screen.
Since my interview, the BBC in particular and to a lesser extent Sky and ITV have broadcast programmes about the problem of service charges on a fairly regular basis. Almost without exception, they have focused on the difficulties faced by leaseholders with no coverage for tenants who have the same issues.
Tenants are indeed the forgotten people when it comes to service charges. To the legal system, they are entirely invisible. Leaseholders are protected to some extent by their leases and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which specifies (under Sections 21 and 22) that they are entitled to receive a summary of their charges and must be given access to their invoice packs.
This is not to minimise the huge enforcement gap, which is real and reprehensible, but they do at least have some protections in the eyes of the law, and this provides them with a pathway to the First Tier Property Tribunal.
Legal Complacency
Assured tenancy agreements are open to interpretation with landlords selecting which clauses they wish to comply with, happily batting away any challenges because so few tenants actually complain.
I made an application to the First Tier Property Tribunal in 2020, and finally had a hearing last year that had to be adjourned because the landlord didn’t have their evidence even though they had five months to prepare.
Ours was a group action involving both tenants and leaseholders, When the hearing restarted four months later, again delayed by the landlord claiming that they couldn’t make any of the dates proposed by the Tribunal, the judge did not uphold the tenants’ claims, but awarded a reduction in the Intensive Housing Charge for leaseholders.
The landlord was ordered to refund a total of £862 per leaseholder because the Tribunal acknowledged that the charge was not in their leases.
By contrast, tenants had to pay up because their tenancy agreement specified that the landlord could, if they chose, provide a wardens flat. This made us ‘supported housing’, even though no such service exists on our estate.
Not a Prison
My estate, Halton Court, is not a prison, sheltered or supported housing so we don’t have a warden’s flat or a warden. The Tribunal had chosen to interpret the agreement in accordance with the flawed evidence given by the landlord.
The Judge observed that many tenants rely on Housing Benefit. This in itself does not make us supported housing tenants, and indeed many tenants continue to work or have private pensions, and do not therefore receive income from the public purse.
The media’s greater focus on leaseholders over tenants when it comes to service charges seems to be a case of stereotyping. When it comes to mould, damp, and disrepairs, it is tenants who are more likely to get coverage, and leaseholders who fade into the background. Possibly reporters investigating service charge abuse are more likely to be leaseholders.
And possibly they believe that tenants are more likely to get the public’s sympathy vote if they are filmed amid thick, pervasive black mould and leaking pipes. Maybe they also believe that tenants struggling to pay extortionate service charges can actually get benefits to cover their housing costs, so their struggles are not as intense as those of leaseholders.
It is also a fact that leaseholders are more likely to organise other leaseholders to protest than tenants. Tenants are more worried about losing their homes if they withhold unreasonable service charges and are also put off from making an application to the Tribunal because of cost, inexperience or fear of facing a court.
Benefit Reduction Risk
For tenant service charge payers on benefits, there are real risks to highlighting any inaccuracies in their charges. Their benefits might be cut without any reduction in service charge demands, leaving the tenant to fill the gap.
It is therefore a system that disincentivises challenge even when overcharging is blatant, and allows one of the most scandalous frauds against the public purse in history to continue unabated. This in itself has been a rallying cry for SHAC, which has called for an investigation by the National Audit Office, only to receive a resounding rejection despite a powerful bundle of evidence. The cover up continues.
For tenants brave enough to lodge a claim in court, the landlord will try to put them off by intimating that if they lose, the tenant will have to pay the landlord’s legal costs. This is totally wrong, but acts as a powerful disincentive if you are on your own.
SHAC Campaigns
At SHAC we are proud to fight on behalf of all tenants, leaseholders and residents, but on top of all the other challenges we face, we should not have to overcome media stereotyping and an uneven playing field when it comes to getting our voices heard on all the issues that affect us.
12 August 2025
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