Service Charges Disputes

Heald has special expertise in disputes about service charges arising from commercial leases. Most leases contain provisions for service charges. There is a huge variation in the detail of those provisions between different leases.

With service charges the landlord and the tenant will have completely different objectives: the landlord will wish to maximise the quality of maintenance and presentation of the building, and recover 100% of costs from tenants. Tenants want to use their premises at a reasonable cost, excluding any costs which are unnecessary or inappropriate. These divergent objectives frequently cause dissatisfaction.

Landlords may try to use lack of transparency to disadvantage a tenant, but there is now a code of best practice published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors which is supported by industry-leading organisations. This may be used as a benchmark against which poor management of service charges may be measured. For more information our specialist litigation solicitors Simon Daw and Gareth Pobjoy would be happy to discuss any problem.