Section 20 Notices: What Each Stage Must Say

A Section 20 notice of intention must give a general description of the proposed works, state the landlord's reasons for considering them necessary, invite written observations, give the address for those observations, state that they must be delivered within the 30-day relevant period and the date on which that period ends, and invite leaseholders to nominate a contractor for an estimate. Miss any of those and the notice may be defective — which puts your recovery back to £250 per leaseholder.

The requirements are not in the Act. They are in the schedules to the 2003 Regulations, and which schedule applies depends on what you are consulting about. This guide sets out what each notice has to say.

This applies to England. The Welsh regulations are separate.

Where the requirements actually live

Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 creates the duty to consult and the cap on recovery if you do not. It does not tell you what to write. The content of each notice comes from the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003.

Which schedule governs your consultation depends on the situation:

Situation	Schedule
Qualifying works, public notice required (OJEU-type procurement)	Schedule 4, Part 1
Qualifying works, no public notice required — the usual case for a self-managed block	Schedule 4, Part 2
Qualifying long term agreements	Schedules 1 and 2
Works under an existing qualifying long term agreement	Schedule 3

Almost every self-managed block consulting on major works is in Schedule 4, Part 2. That is the one to work from unless you have a specific reason to think otherwise.

Our Section 20 consultation guide covers the three-stage process end to end, and the requirements checklist is the short-form version.

What the notice of intention must contain

Under Schedule 4, Part 2, paragraph 1(2), the notice of intention must:

• describe in general terms the proposed works, or specify a place and hours at which a description may be inspected
• state, in the words of the Regulations, "the landlord's reasons for considering it necessary to carry out the proposed works"
• invite the making of written observations
• specify the address to which observations may be sent, that they must be delivered within the relevant period, and the date on which the relevant period ends

Note what that last requirement is and is not. Paragraph 1(2)(d)(ii) requires the notice to state that observations must be delivered within the relevant period — a delivery test, tied to the period regulation 2 defines, not a receipt deadline the landlord picks. A notice that gives only a landlord-chosen "received by" cut-off has stated the wrong test and dropped a mandatory limb.

Paragraph 1(3) adds a requirement that is frequently missed. The notice must

"invite each tenant and the association (if any) to propose, within the relevant period, the name of a person from whom the landlord should try to obtain an estimate for the carrying out of the proposed works."

That is the nomination right. A notice that describes the works and asks for observations but never invites nominations has left out a mandatory element.

The 30 days is defined — do not estimate it

Regulation 2 defines "the relevant period" as

"the period of 30 days beginning with the date of the notice"

Two things follow. First, it is 30 days, not a month, and not "about four weeks." Second, it begins with the date of the notice — so the date on the notice is doing real work and needs to be right.

Build in service time on top. Thirty days beginning with the date of the notice is not thirty days from when a leaseholder actually receives it, and a leaseholder who received a notice with three days left is exactly the kind of leaseholder who later argues they were prejudiced.

Our free Section 20 Timeline Calculator works the dates out from your start date, and the Section 20 Notice Generator produces the notices for each stage.

The mistakes that make a notice defective

Describing the works too vaguely. "External repairs" is not a general description of proposed works. "Replacement of the flat roof over the rear elevation, including new insulation and rainwater goods" is.

Stating what you are doing but not why. The Regulations ask for the landlord's reasons for considering it necessary. A notice that describes works without justifying them has missed a limb.

Omitting the nomination invitation. The single most common omission in notices produced from a generic template.

Getting the observation address wrong. If observations go to an address nobody monitors, you have technically complied and practically failed. Use an address a director actually checks.

Dating the notice before you send it. The 30 days runs from the date of the notice. Post-dating or back-dating shortens the real window and creates an argument you do not want to have.

Ignoring observations that arrive. The duty is to have regard to observations. There is no point running a compliant consultation and then filing the responses unread — and a leaseholder who can show their observation went nowhere has the beginnings of a prejudice argument. Where consultation has already gone wrong, the remedy is an application to the tribunal to dispense with the requirements under section 20ZA of the 1985 Act.

A practical sequence

1. Establish that the works are qualifying — more than £250 for any one leaseholder.
2. Identify the right schedule (usually Schedule 4, Part 2).
3. Draft the notice of intention with all five elements: description, reasons, invitation to observe, address and deadline, nomination invitation.
4. Date it the day you send it. Serve it on every leaseholder and on any recognised tenants' association.
5. Diarise 30 days beginning with the date of the notice.
6. Log every observation received, and record what you did about each one.
7. Move to the estimates stage only after the relevant period has expired.

Keep the served copies. If a service charge is later challenged, the records are what prove the consultation happened — see the FTT challenge guide for what a tribunal will look for.

LevyBoard is building guided block management software for volunteer directors — service charge accounting, arrears tracking, and Section 20 compliance, designed for people who did not sign up to become property managers.

This guide applies to England; the Welsh consultation regulations are separate. This is general information, not legal advice. Notice content and service requirements are technical and the consequences of getting them wrong are financial — for a large or contested consultation, have the notices reviewed by a solicitor specialising in leasehold law, or start with the free service at the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE).

Sources

• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 20 — limitation of service charges: consultation requirements
• Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003
• SI 2003/1987, Schedule 4 — consultation requirements for qualifying works
• SI 2003/1987, regulation 2 — definition of "the relevant period"
• Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE)