A block is a different job to a single let. Nobody is renting the entrance hall, so nobody chases a leak in the communal riser the way a tenant chases a leak in their own kitchen, and the cost of getting it wrong is spread across every leaseholder rather than falling on one owner. This is what block management for a residents’ management company (RMC) or a freeholder actually involves, and how the bigger jobs get consulted on before they are instructed.
What counts as communal
Entrance halls, stairwells, landings, communal lighting, door entry hardware, floor coverings in shared circulation, and the external fabric: railings, steps, rainwater goods, the roof and the walls that enclose the building. None of it belongs to one flat. All of it needs someone accountable for its condition, and a schedule for looking at it before something fails rather than after.
We maintain these areas for freeholders, RMCs and right to manage (RTM) companies against a schedule agreed in advance. If your building has recently taken over its own management under a right to manage claim, our article on RTM company services covers what changes on the day that happens and what a new board should line up first.
Reactive work versus planned work
Reactive work is what turns up unannounced: a communal light that has failed, a door closer that has stopped working, a leak coming through a stairwell ceiling. It gets reported to one place and closed out, the same as it would for a single let.
Planned work is everything you can see coming if you look: gutters that need clearing before autumn, redecoration cycles for the common parts, external repairs that get cheaper the earlier they are caught. A board that only ever reacts ends up paying emergency rates for work that could have been booked in at a normal rate months earlier. Scheduled inspections of the common parts, recorded and kept on file, are what let a board catch a defect before a leaseholder has to raise it as a complaint.
How section 20 consultation shapes larger projects
Under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and the regulations made under it, works above a set cost threshold, or long-term agreements above a separate threshold, trigger a statutory consultation process before the freeholder or the management company can recover the full cost through the service charge. In outline, leaseholders have to be notified of the intention to carry out the works, given the chance to nominate a contractor, and then given the estimates before a contract is awarded.
Running that consultation correctly is the freeholder’s or the management company’s responsibility, not ours, and getting it wrong can mean the cost is capped even though the work was necessary. We are not solicitors and this is not legal advice: if a job on your building looks close to the threshold, take your own advice on whether consultation applies and how to run it. What we do is make sure our written quotes and the supporting detail arrive early enough that a board is not scrambling to meet the statutory timetable once it has decided to go ahead.
Written quotes a board can minute
Every quoted job goes to the board in writing before anything is instructed, itemised and in plain English, so a decision can be minuted and shown to a leaseholder who asks what their money went on. On completion, the costs are reported back against that original quote. That paper trail matters more for a block than for a single let, because a board is spending leaseholders’ money and has to be able to account for it, not just its own.
The same discipline applies to the smaller, routine side of the job: seasonal servicing, redecoration, and the maintenance that does not need consultation but still needs a written record. Our article on fixed price property maintenance covers when that routine work can honestly be quoted as a fixed price and when it genuinely cannot.
If you are weighing this against managing a single let
Some readers here are landlords with one flat in a managed block rather than a director of the RMC itself. If that is you, our article on property management in central London covers the same idea for a tenanted property rather than a block, and where the communal side and the tenanted side meet.
Where the work itself is being priced, the same rule applies as everywhere else on our site. Most jobs are quoted as a fixed price after the site visit. Where a scope genuinely cannot be pinned down in advance, we say so at the visit and agree in writing how it will be charged before any work starts.
Talk to us about your block
The consultation, the site visit and the written quote are free and carry no obligation. If you sit on the board of an RMC or RTM company, or you are a freeholder responsible for the common parts of a building in central London, see the full detail on our property management service page, or request a free quote and tell us about the building.