Manage your block like a professional agent

A Section 20 consultation is a statutory process under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 that must be followed before carrying out qualifying works costing more than £250 per leaseholder. It involves three stages: a notice of intention, obtaining estimates, and a notice of estimates. The two notice stages each carry a 'relevant period', which regulation 2 of the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003 defines as 'the period of 30 days beginning with the date of the notice', during which leaseholders may make observations. Obtaining the estimates itself carries no statutory minimum period. Failing to follow the process correctly means each leaseholder's contribution to the works is capped at £250 unless a tribunal dispenses with the requirements.

Service charges are typically split between leaseholders based on the percentage share specified in each lease. Check your individual leases for the apportionment — common bases include equal shares, floor area ratios, or rateable values. Add up all budgeted costs for the year (insurance, maintenance, reserves, management), then multiply by each unit's lease percentage to calculate individual demands.

What your block produces as its annual service charge accounts — in what format, and certified by whom — is set by your lease, not by statute. RICS/ICAEW guidance recommends an accruals basis, expenditure shown by category, surplus or deficit carried forward and the reserve fund balance kept separate, and an independent accountant's report; that is best practice and a likely lease requirement rather than a statutory rule in itself. Separately, two different things get called "year-end accounts", and only one of them is a statutory duty: under section 21 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 any leaseholder can request a written summary of the relevant costs for a 12-month period, and the landlord must supply it within one month of the request or six months of the end of that period, whichever is later. Where the service charges are payable by the tenants of more than four dwellings, that summary must be certified by a qualified accountant. Both of those rules are in the version of section 21 in force from 17 December 1996 (legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/70/section/21/1996-12-17) — the default view of section 21 shows a later substituted section, commenced only so far as it confers a regulation-making power, which contains neither rule.

No. A subscription covers one development — the buildings your company manages on the same site — however many structures that turns out to be. Plenty of RMCs run a converted house and a later block side by side, or two wings built decades apart, and that is one job with one set of leaseholders and one committee, not two. You should not have to decide whether each structure counts as a block before you can work out what you would pay. If you manage genuinely separate developments, get in touch and we will price it properly rather than surprise you later.

No, and it is not intended to. Your block is a limited company, so it still owes Companies House statutory accounts and a confirmation statement whatever software you use, and RICS/ICAEW guidance recommends an independent accountant reports on service charge accounts. What is more, what your block must produce at year end is set by your lease, which differs from block to block. LevyBoard keeps the underlying records right as you go — every demand and cost recorded against its fund, and each payment once it is matched to a demand, with the reserve fund kept separate from the general fund — and gives you an income and expenditure statement by fund at year end. Your accountant works from that rather than rebuilding your year from bank statements, which is where their time and your fee usually go.

Start with a formal written demand showing the amount owed and the period it covers, and check what your own lease requires a demand to state. Follow up with reminder letters at 14-day and 30-day intervals. If payment is not received, you can apply to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) for a determination that the charges are payable. The 18-month rule under Section 20B means demands must be issued within 18 months of the costs being incurred.

RMC directors are responsible for managing the building on behalf of all leaseholders. Key duties include: budgeting and collecting service charges, arranging building insurance, maintaining common parts, complying with health and safety regulations, filing a confirmation statement with Companies House, following Section 20 consultation procedures for major works, and keeping proper accounts. Directors have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company and its members.

Section 20B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires that service charge demands must be served within 18 months of the costs being incurred. If a demand is not served within this window, the leaseholder is not liable to pay — unless they were notified in writing within the 18-month period both that the costs had been incurred and that they would subsequently be required, under the terms of their lease, to contribute to those costs by the payment of a service charge. Both limbs are required — a note saying only that a demand will follow does not preserve the charge. This rule exists to prevent landlords from accumulating large unexpected bills.

One subscription covers your whole development, however many buildings are in it. Single Development is £15 a month for up to 15 flats, or £150 a year. Larger Development is £25 a month for 16 to 40 flats, or £250 a year — two months free on either annual plan. Above 40 flats, get in touch and we will price it properly. There is no per-unit charge and no setup fee, and the price does not change because your flats sit in two structures rather than one.

LevyBoard is built by Crocker Digital Ltd (Company No. 17008789), a UK-based technology company focused on solving real problems for underserved professional communities. The platform is designed specifically for volunteer directors who manage blocks without professional property management training.

Your records are held in a UK-region database with row-level isolation, so one block’s data is unreachable from another account. Issued demands, Section 20 notices and section 48 notices are stored with a hash of the exact document, and the issue record and the audit trail cannot be changed by your account or by our application, including its own service credentials — the only change made to them is anonymisation, on erasure or seven years after issue. You can export your records as a file at any time, including after cancelling (issued PDFs download individually), and you can delete your account from your settings. Full details are in our privacy policy.