Strengthening leaseholder protections over fees, charges and services: consultation

2.5 Application of proposals to those who rent

90. Many “social housing tenants” also pay a service charge.[15] Landlords can only charge for services explicitly listed in the tenancy agreement. Common services covered by the service charge include:
    1. Cleaning/caretaking, such as maintenance of internal communal areas and stairs;
    2. Gardening and grounds maintenance such as grass cutting and planting;
    3. Management fee such as staff costs and administrative tasks, including preparing service charge demands, collecting fees and preparing annual statements; and
    4. Lighting such as costs for communal lighting, including replacing bulbs.
91. The 2024 Act provides social housing tenants of Private Registered Providers in England and Registered Social Landlords in Wales with new rights and protections, whether they pay fixed or variable service charges.[16] We would welcome views on how they should be applied.

i) Service charge demands

92. As discussed in section 2.2, the focus of the new service charge demand is to set out how much each leaseholder or social housing tenant is required to pay for the management and maintenance of their building. We believe the updated approach for leaseholders, as set out in Annex B, should also apply to social housing tenants, and we do not propose any modifications to it.

ii) Annual report

93. The new annual report, as proposed in section 2.1, will provide timely information about service charges and building management plans. For social housing tenants, we propose a simplified version that excludes information about services not typically covered by their service charges. This will reduce burdens on social landlords in providing information and will ensure that the information provided is only relevant to the charges to which these tenants pay.

iii) Right to information

94. Measures in the 2024 Act give social housing tenants the right to request and inspect documents (see Table 1). We propose that a bespoke list of prescribed information may better suit their needs, and welcome views on particular costs or services that should be included or excluded from Table 1.

95. Paragraph 74 explained that social housing tenants (including leaseholders of shared ownership homes with less than a 100% share) of Private Registered Providers of social housing in England will benefit from the new Social Tenants Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs), which will oblige Private Registered Providers to proactively publish information about service charges and to answer requests for further information from their tenants. We do not consider that these new rights to information will cause any problems to social housing tenants or landlords.