The listing says £1,800 a year. The conveyancer's pack says £2,400. The seller says it went up "a bit" last year, and nobody has mentioned the roof.

Service charges are the part of buying a flat where the numbers you're given are least reliable, and where the real cost tends to arrive after you've moved in. There's no benchmark that tells you whether a figure is normal, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. There are rules about how the money gets spent and what you're entitled to see. Those are worth knowing before you offer.

Everything below is England. Wales has parallel rules under its own regulations and a different tribunal, and Scotland doesn't have residential leasehold at all.

What a service charge actually is

It's your share of what it costs to run the building: insurance, communal repairs, cleaning, lighting, lifts, gardens, the managing agent's fee, and usually a contribution to a reserve fund for future major works. Your lease sets out what can be charged and how it's split between the flats.

Three things people get wrong.

It isn't a price the freeholder sets. It's a recovery of costs actually incurred, which is why a "£1,800 service charge" on a listing means very little. It's last year's number, or an estimate, and neither binds anyone.

"Reasonable" is a legal test, not a figure. Under section 19 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, service charges are payable only to the extent that costs were reasonably incurred and works were of a reasonable standard. That's a challenge route, not a ceiling.

The money isn't the freeholder's. Under section 42 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, service charge contributions are held on trust for the leaseholders who paid them. It's your money in that account.

The £250 rule, and why it has less teeth than it sounds

This is the threshold most buyers have never heard of, and the most useful thing on this page.

If the landlord wants to carry out qualifying works where any single leaseholder's share would come to more than £250, they have to consult everyone first. Same for a qualifying long term agreement, meaning any contract running more than twelve months, where any leaseholder's share exceeds £100 in an accounting year. That's section 20 of the 1985 Act, with the detail in the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003.

Consultation runs in three stages:

Notice of Intention. Describes the works, says why they're needed, and invites written observations within 30 days. You can also nominate a contractor you'd like the landlord to get a quote from.
Notice of Estimates. At least two estimates, and at least one has to come from someone wholly unconnected with the landlord. Another 30 days to comment.
Notice of Reasons. If the landlord doesn't go with the cheapest estimate or your nominee, they have to explain why, within 21 days of signing the contract.

Skip the consultation and recovery is capped at £250 per leaseholder for the works, or £100 a year for a long term agreement, no matter what the job actually cost. On a £400,000 roof across twenty flats, that's the difference between £20,000 a flat and £250.

Here's the part the guides leave out. The landlord can apply to the tribunal to dispense with consultation, and in Daejan Investments Ltd v Benson [2013] UKSC 14 the Supreme Court held, by three to two, that dispensation turns on whether leaseholders suffered real prejudice, not on how badly the landlord behaved. A serious procedural failure that cost you nothing in practice is usually forgiven. Treat the £250 cap as a lever, not a jackpot.

The threshold itself hasn't moved since 2003. Twenty-odd years of building cost inflation later, almost any real piece of work crosses it, which is why a Notice of Intention landing on the doormat is one of the most reliable early signals that a large bill is coming.

Why nobody can tell you what's normal

We went looking for a credible average service charge by borough or building type and couldn't find one we'd stand behind. The figures circulating online come mostly from estate agency blogs with no stated methodology, and they get quoted back and forth until they look like data.

The average would be close to useless anyway, because the drivers are building-specific and they don't average out:

A lift, a concierge, or communal heating. Any one of these changes the number by more than the borough does.
The building's insurance, frequently the single largest line, and wildly variable between blocks.
Age and condition of the expensive things: roof, windows, lifts, risers.
Whether there's a reserve fund, and whether it bears any relation to what's coming.
Whether the block is mid-remediation. If it's a flat in a clad building, read our EWS1 explainer too, because the two questions run together.

The better question isn't "is £2,400 normal". It's "what is this building committed to spending in the next five years, and how much of it is already saved".

The red flags worth pricing in

Things that should make you ask harder questions, roughly in order of how often they cost buyers money.

A reserve fund that's empty or token. A block with a 40-year-old roof and £8,000 in reserve is telling you the bill is coming and it's coming as a one-off demand.

Major works known but not yet consulted on. If the surveyor's report exists and the Notice of Intention hasn't gone out, the cost lands on whoever owns the flat when it does. That's you. Ask directly whether any section 20 consultation is planned or in progress.

A managing agent connected to the freeholder. Common, and not automatically wrong. It does remove the commercial pressure that keeps fees honest, so know it before you read the accounts.

Insurance commission. Building insurance is often the single biggest line, and commissions have historically been buried in it. Since 31 December 2023, FCA rules require the total commission the firm and its associates receive to be disclosed to leaseholders, along with the premium breakdown. If nobody can produce that, it's fair to press.

A large percentage management fee. A fee expressed as a percentage of total spend rewards spending more. A flat per-unit fee doesn't.

Charges arriving late. Under section 20B, if costs were incurred more than 18 months before the demand is served, you're generally not liable, unless you were notified in writing within that 18 months that they'd been incurred and would be recharged.

What you're entitled to see, and what changes in 2027

Today's information rights are real but clunky. You can require the landlord in writing to provide a written summary of relevant costs for the last twelve months. They have to comply within one month of the request or six months from the end of that period, whichever is later, and where the charges cover more than four dwellings the summary has to be certified by a qualified accountant. Within six months of getting the summary you can then require reasonable facilities to inspect the invoices and receipts behind it, free of charge.

If that sounds like a process designed in another era, it was. Parliament substituted a modern replacement into the Act in 2008 and then never fully commenced it, so the version that actually works is the older one.

That's what the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 was meant to fix. As at August 2026, only around ten of its 125 sections have commenced, and the service charge transparency provisions are not among them. On 15 July 2026 the government published its consultation response and confirmed it will introduce a standardised service charge demand form, an annual report on the building's condition and planned major works, and a right to request building information including fire safety documents and maintenance invoices going back up to six years. It also confirmed new rules limiting when landlords can pass their litigation costs to leaseholders.

The stated timetable is "as soon as possible from 2027". None of it is in force today, which is worth remembering when you read guides that describe it in the present tense.

What to do about it

Before you offer, in this order.

Ask for the last three years of service charge accounts, not a headline figure. Three years shows the direction of travel and the one-offs.
Ask what the reserve fund balance is, in pounds, and what it's earmarked for.
Ask whether any section 20 consultation is live or planned, and whether a condition survey or major works programme exists. This is the single question most likely to save you five figures.
Ask for the buildings insurance summary and the commission disclosure. The FCA rules put that duty on the insurance firm, and it's meant to reach you. How readily it appears tells you something about the agent.
Ask who manages the block and whether they're connected to the freeholder, and which redress scheme they belong to. Property managers in England have had to belong to a government-approved scheme since 1 October 2014, with fines of up to £5,000 for those who don't.
Read the lease's service charge clause, or have your conveyancer put it in plain terms: the percentage split, what's recoverable, and whether there's a reserve fund provision at all.
If you already own and the charges look wrong, apply to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) under section 27A for a determination of whether a charge is payable and reasonable. Since 13 July 2026 that's £114 to apply and £227 if it goes to a hearing. The tribunal doesn't usually order the losing side to pay the other's costs, and you can ask for a section 20C order so the landlord's costs of the case don't come back at you through the service charge.

Most of this is answerable from documents the seller's side already holds. If they won't produce them, that's information too. Nookaly flags a flat's tenure and price context early, which at least tells you which of these questions you'll need before you get attached to the place.

The honest summary

There's no such thing as a normal service charge, and anyone quoting you one is quoting an estate agent's blog. What matters is what the building is committed to spending and whether the money exists. The £250 threshold is the most useful thing in the law, as a protection and as an early warning, though Daejan makes it a lever rather than a guarantee.

Real transparency rules are on the statute book and the government says they start arriving in 2027. Until then the documents that matter are the accounts, the reserve fund balance, and the answer to whether a section 20 notice is coming. If nobody will give you those, price the flat as though the roof needs doing.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice, and it describes the position in England as at August 2026. Leasehold law is mid-reform and several of the rules referred to here are expected to change. Check the current position with your conveyancer before making a decision.