New research carried out by SHAC shows that across all the cases of service charges challenged at the First Tier Property Tribunal (FTT), more than 63% of landlords were found to be overcharging for services. This figure rises to more than 66% for housing association landlords.
The overcharges in many of the cases were replicated across whole estates. However, the FTT can only order refunds to the tenants and residents who are named in the judgement. This means that landlords are generally getting away with large scale financial exploitation, generating unearned income from a captive audience.
Cases Reviewed
All judgements by the FTT in 2025 concerning levels of service charge were analysed; a total of 238 cases. They reveal an ongoing and shocking level of overcharging, in line with reports received by SHAC.
The number of cases considered by the FTT annually are only a tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands of service charge accounts managed by UK landlords and managing agents. This is in part a reflection of the limited capacity of the court system, and the considerable barriers to justice for tenants and residents with service charge disputes.
However, for each case that was heard, many, many more are settled out of court, with the landlord admitting the overcharging only after a Tribunal claim has been lodged. This suggests that landlords wait to see how far a tenant or resident will go before they address concerns.
Landlords also routinely threaten claimants that they will demand compensation to cover their high legal costs if the tenant or resident is not successful in proving overcharging, further attempting to deter them from pursuing justice.
Many more Tribunal cases would also undoubtedly have been lodged if service charge records had actually been provided when tenants and residents requested them. In practice, failure to disclose these records often prevents residents from pursuing claims, even though landlords have a legal duty to provide this information.
Housing Associations Are Worst Offenders
A further deterrent is the sense of disadvantage because tenants and residents are unable to get legal advice or advocacy. The research therefore compared the outcome of cases according to whether the parties to the case had legal representation or advocacy.
It found that tenants and residents had representation in just 20% of cases, compared to landlords or their managing agents who were represented in over 60% of cases.
Outcomes were not affected by whether the parties had representation across the population of cases as a whole. However, when the housing association cases were isolated, the outcomes changed dramatically. Tenants or residents who had representation (15% of the 33 housing association cases) were successful in arguing that overcharging had taken place in 80% of cases.
Conversely, tenants and residents were clearly disadvantaged when they did not have representation, especially when the landlord did. In such instances, they were only successful in arguing that overcharging had taken place in around 65% of cases (13).
Seven Steps to Fairer Charges
SHAC believes that the following measures are essential to end service charge abuse:
One | Council Housing Providers – Service charge abuse is considerably less common in council housing (an overcharging rate of 40% was identified for this cohort), partly because these bodies are subject to Freedom of Information legislation, which enhances transparency and accountability. While the harm caused to affected tenants remains significant, this pattern indicates that where democratic oversight exists, and where landlords are not driven by a need to maximise surplus or profit, there is less incentive to engage in financial exploitation.
This underscores the case for the focussing the provision of public housing on local councils not private or housing association landlords.
Two | Alternative Routes to Resolution – Tenants and residents who dispute their service charges should be able to pay the disputed amount to a court. The payment should prevent the landlord designating the tenant or resident as being in arrears. The landlord should be given a timeframe within which they must evidence the legitimacy of the charge. If they are unable to do so, the funds are to be returned to the tenant or resident. If the charges are shown to be legitimate, the monies are passed onto the landlord. This would have several benefits:
- It would speed up the process for the simpler challenges (double invoices, lift maintenance where no lift exists for example) and avoid a lengthy and costly Tribunal process.
- It would eliminate the vast majority of overcharging, leaving the FTT for the more subjective and complex cases. Landlords would be aware that swift justice is likely to be within the reach of most tenants and residents, and would clean up their processes.
- It would balance the rights of tenants and landlords. Currently, the law requires tenants and residents to pay their service charges even when errors are obvious, leaving them to challenge the landlord for a refund afterward. This system gives landlords little incentive to engage proactively with disputes, and as a result, they rarely do so.
Three | Enhanced Consistency – Legislation protecting tenants and residents must be made consistent across all landlord types (councils, housing associations, almshouses, charities, and private landlords), and across all tenancy types (full renters, shared owners, and leaseholders). The current patchwork of rights and remedies, which varies depending on tenure and landlord, creates confusion and must be resolved.
Four | Legal Advocacy and Advice – Legal Aid should be expanded and funded to cover housing related cases. A fully funded service needs to be set up to offer advocacy and advice to those with housing issues, possibly sourced via a landlord levy.
Five | Improved Regulation – A new service charge regulatory standard should be incorporated into the RSH’s Regulatory Framework to bring clarity and accountability to service charging. At present, the RSH’s oversight is limited to landlord corporate accounts. This standard should explicitly cover what can be charged to leaseholders and tenants, and clearly differentiate between costs covered by rent and those that can be billed separately.
Six | Expanded Scope of Remedy – Where overcharging is identified through legal or regulatory processes, landlords must be required to refund all affected tenants and residents, not only those who are party to a claim. Similarly, landlords should be prohibited from reissuing charges that have previously been disallowed by a Tribunal or by the Regulator.
Seven | Meaningful Sanction – The sanctions available against landlords who breach rules are currently too weak to be effective. For example, the average compensation awarded by the Housing Ombudsman is less than £300. Meanwhile, in the housing association sector, landlords who frequently attract negative press continue to receive substantial funding through the Affordable Housing Programme. Unless penalties for misconduct are made meaningful, they will continue failing to drive improvements in landlord practices.
The End Service Charge Abuse Campaign
SHAC members have led the fight against service charge abuse and will continue to campaign for justice. For too long, protections for tenants and residents have been gradually eroded, and the system has been increasingly stacked in favour of landlords. Poverty and unjust practices have driven tenants and residents to make a stand, and this includes mass withholding of service charge payments.
See more about the End Service Charge Abuse campaign.
12 February 2026
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