Does the leaseholder have a right to know what service charges are being used for?

Regardless of whether the lease allows for this, the leaseholder has a legal right to request service charge accounts, also known as a summary of relevant costs, at the end of each accounting year. If landlords or managers fail to provide these accounts leaseholders can make a formal written request for this financial information. If a written request is made, the landlord or manager must provide the summary within one month of the request or within six months of the end of the period covered by the summary, whichever is later.

Following the receipt of this summary, leaseholders have an additional legal right to carry out an inspection of all the invoices, receipts and other documents that support the summary. Again a written request must be made by a leaseholder and it is an offence for a landlord or appointed managers to fail to provide a summary, to ignore a request for inspection or to refuse to allow it to take place.