Problems in your block should not simply be ignored.

Is your service charge too high? Are essential repairs not being carried out? Has the managing agent failed to explain where the money has gone? Have you received a substantial bill for major works? Do the leaseholders want greater control over the management of the building?

Most people arrive with three things: an unexplained bill, a question nobody has answered, and a repair that has still not been done.

The practical help starts with the documents — the lease, the service-charge demands, the budget and accounts, and the correspondence with the managing agent. From those we can say what the evidence shows, and only then which route may help: a request for information, negotiation, an application to the Property Tribunal, or something else entirely.

We may be able to help flat owners with:

• —unreasonable or unexplained service charges;
• —administration charges;
• —major works and Section 20 consultation;
• —failure to repair or maintain the building;
• —disputes about responsibility under the lease;
• —persistent poor management;
• —applications for the appointment of a manager;
• —right-to-manage issues;
• —lease variation;
• —suitable residential leasehold proceedings within our competence.

Most leasehold work does not end in a tribunal hearing, and it is worth being plain about what it does produce. In practice a good outcome usually looks like one of these:

• —the accounts and the contract documentation appear, so the charge can finally be checked line by line;
• —consultation or notice defects are identified and corrected, or a demand is withdrawn or reissued;
• —the repair that had been ignored is carried out on a timetable, or the obligation to do it is put beyond argument;
• —a charge is reduced, or a disputed sum is set aside, because the evidence does not support it;
• —an application to the Tribunal is made and presented properly, and a decision is reached on the real issue;
• —the leaseholders obtain the information or the control they were entitled to in the first place.

A typical example: a service charge of £4,200 covering major works, with no summary of rights and no accounts. What the flat owners needed was not an argument about how the building felt, but the documentation the law entitles them to, a check on whether the consultation requirements had been met, and a clear view of the remedy if they had not. That is the work — and it is usually over long before anyone reaches a hearing room.