Demands for service charges payable by tenants of dwellings must be accompanied by a summary of the tenant’s rights and obligations: section 21B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. The summary must be legible in printed or typewritten form, using a 10pt font. The content is also prescribed: see the Service Charges (Summary of Rights and Obligations, and Transitional Provision)(
The legislation does not include any provisions enabling the court to dispense with or relax the requirements and tenants that do not receive the relevant information are entitled to withhold payment. In addition, any provisions in the tenant’s lease relating to non-payment or late payment of service charges will be ineffective. Consequently, the landlord will be unable to charge interest or forfeit the lease for non-payment.
In Tingdene Holiday Parks Ltd v Cox [2011] UKUT 310 (LC); [2011] PLSCS 227, the landlord did not send the prescribed information to its tenants until after its service charge demands were issued. It argued that the legislation does not require that the summary must be attached to the demand – and that the requirements would be satisfied if a demand and summary are contained in separate envelopes. Therefore, although the documents were sent 11 days apart, the one clearly referred back to the other – and the requirements had been met.
The Upper Tribunal disagreed. It did not see how a summary sent 11 days after the demand to which it was intended to relate could be said to have “accompanied” the demand. The two documents had to be sent together. Consequently, the tribunal rejected the landlord’s argument that it had complied with the statutory requirements.
The landlord also tried to persuade the judge that it had complied with the requirements because one of the disputed service charge demands was accompanied by a photocopy of the Queen’s Printer’s form of the 2007 Regulations (without any further reference or explanation). Once again, the tribunal disagreed.
It ruled that the legislation had been enacted to ensure that tenants who receive service charge demands can also see a statement of their rights and obligations, encapsulated in 12 explanatory paragraphs, in a document entitled “Service Charges – Summary of tenants’ rights and obligations”. The heading of the document is important in directing the tenant’s attention to what it contains.
The statutory instrument has its own title and contains additional text. Therefore, the provision of a copy of the instrument will not satisfy the statutory requirements, even though the instrument sets out what a summary of the tenant’s rights and obligations must say.
Landlords and managing agents ignore these requirements at their peril. Those who have not already done so would be well advised to add the summary to their systems to be used in conjunction with service charge demands. Practitioners who are instructed to issue proceedings for service charge arrears would also be well-advised to check that the requirements have been satisfied before doing so.
Allyson Colby is a property law consultant