Council leaseholders

What the homeownership team do

The homeownership team can answer all your questions about being a leaseholder, charges, and buying/ selling information.

As a leaseholder, they can support you in the following areas:

• major works advice
• selling your leasehold property
• leasehold management
• breakdowns of charges
• lease extensions
• permission requests

Information about Section 20B Notices

A section 20B notice is a notice that alerts you to costs that we have paid or have become payable by us that you will be required to pay under the terms of your lease. A Section 20B notice is not a bill and does not tell you how much is payable by you as your share of the costs.

Why Section 20B notices are necessary

The law tells us that as your landlord we must bill you or tell you about costs that have been paid or become payable by us within the last 18 months that you will be required to pay towards.

Requesting more detailed breakdowns of the costs

We will provide a breakdown of the costs when we bill you for the works or services.

Receiving invoices

We will invoice you when we are certain of which costs are payable by you and can ensure the costs are correctly shared out to reflect the works/services carried out according to the terms of your lease. We are working to agree on the figures so that we can do so.

How much you will have to pay

We cannot tell you at the moment how much you will be asked to pay towards the costs we have told you about. The figure we have provided in the S20B Notice is not your share. Additional costs may be incurred or become payable that we will notify you of separately. When we can, we will breakdown the costs and calculate your share and it is at this time that we will issue you with an invoice.

What you should do if selling your home

Your solicitor will normally receive questions from the buyer, called a pre-assignment enquiry. It is usual for the buyer to ask about works and services that have been provided but not yet billed. In this case, the questions will be referred to us. We may advise that there are costs relating to works/services which have not been billed. You and the vendor may then agree on how this is to be taken into account. Sometimes the seller is asked to provide the buyer’s solicitor with a sum of money to be released to the new owner when they receive the bill.

Paying if you were not the leaseholder when the works were carried out

You are liable to us for payment of any new invoices that we send you as the current owner. However, we suggest that you speak to your solicitor, as the seller may have agreed to set aside money to pay for works for which costs were anticipated but that we had not notified or billed to them prior to your purchase of the lease.

Liability to pay if works were carried out before the property was bought under the Right to Buy

Your lease may allow us to recharge for works carried out between the date your property was valued for the Right to Buy and the date you bought it. You will not be required to pay if the work was completed before your property was valued or the costs are not included in your Offer Notice.

For impartial advice and general information regarding Leasehold Management you can visit   ‘The Leasehold Advisory Service’ website Home - The Leasehold Advisory Service (lease-advice.org)