Is that service charge high — and where does it go?
Type the charge and see where it sits against buildings like yours. Upload the accounts and see where the money goes, what has moved, and what to ask.
Type the charge or drag the marker — the answer updates as you go, against a typical England & Wales flat.
- Buildings like this £1,920–£2,890
- Most managed flats £1,525–£8,680
Free · no account · the benchmark runs in your browser — none of your figures are sent to us unless you continue to the upload
Upload the accounts and budgets — three years, the current budget and a demand. The report shows where the money goes, what has moved, and which lines carry a statutory ask.
- BuyerAsk the agent for the LPE1 pack — the accounts and budget every leasehold sale produces. See it before you offer.
- OwnerThe managing agent must give you a summary of the accounts on request.Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, s.21
How it works
Describe the building
Region, bedrooms, height and age, amenities, and the annual charge. The benchmark runs in your browser, and your figures stay there unless you continue to the upload. Our analytics records the band, never the figures.
Upload the accounts
Give an email for the report, then upload up to eight PDFs: three years of accounts and budgets, the current budget and a demand — the set in the LPE1 pack.
Read the report
Where the money goes against typical shares, the three-year trajectory, budget against actual, the reserve — and the questions each tripwire earns.
Why the charge matters more than it looks
A service charge is a running cost, a lending constraint and a negotiation lever at once. These four facts are why a minute with the checker is worth it.
The average annual service charge on an England & Wales flat, up a third in five years.
Hamptons' 2025 index, gathered at the point of sale and estimated across each building. London averages £2,801, and professionally managed blocks budget higher still — that spread is why the checker shows a range, not a point.
The share of flats whose service charge exceeds 1% of their value — the level at which some lenders now decline.
Lenders count the charge as committed spending, so it cuts the maximum loan directly. Add an asking price and the checker shows where a charge sits against the 1% and 2% cliffs.
How many years of accounts a buyer's conveyancer expects to see, plus the current budget.
The LPE1 management pack a seller buys mid-transaction contains exactly that set. Nobody helps a buyer read it — which is what the accounts deep-dive is for.
The statutory limit on how old a cost can be before it is demanded — miss the notice and it is not payable.
One of a dozen tripwires the accounts read checks for, each tied to a question you are entitled to ask rather than an accusation. Thresholds come from one versioned table, so they update when the law does.
Figures current as of 7 Sep 2026, from the Hamptons Service Charge Index, the TPI Service Charge Index, the English Housing Survey and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
What the accounts read checks
Every conclusion is written by rules with a source, and nothing accuses a named party — each flag is an evidence line plus a question you are entitled to ask.
Where the money goes
Each category against the typical share for professionally managed blocks — insurance, management, repairs, reserves, staff, utilities.
What has moved
Year-on-year growth against the managed-block benchmark, budget against actual, and whether the reserve is being drawn down.
The statutory tripwires
The 18-month rule, consultation thresholds, accountant certification, trust-account evidence, insurance disclosure, building-safety caps.
Service charge questions, answered
What is a normal service charge for a flat?
The average England & Wales flat pays about £2,400 a year, London about £2,800, and professionally managed blocks budget nearer £2,900 — with a wide spread by building height, age and amenities. The checker builds a range for a building like yours from those published indices rather than quoting one national number.
Can I challenge a service charge?
Yes. A leaseholder can ask for a summary of costs and inspect the receipts, must be consulted on major works above a threshold, and can apply to the tribunal over reasonableness. The report names the entitlement behind each question it raises, so a challenge starts from the right ask.
Why do I need three years of accounts?
One year benchmarks; three show trajectory — category growth, budgets that are always beaten, reserve draw-downs and works that appear without consultation papers. That is exactly the set a buyer's conveyancer expects in the LPE1 management pack, so it costs nothing extra to gather.
Is a low service charge always good news?
No. In an older building a charge well below the band often means deferred maintenance and an underfunded reserve — a special levy waiting to happen. The checker says so rather than reading lower as better.
What happens to the documents I upload?
They go straight to a private store and are kept to deliver the report and to re-run the reading as it improves. The report carries a delete button that removes the documents, every extracted figure and the report itself, and the privacy policy describes the rest.
Does the tool cover Scotland?
No — Scotland has no residential leasehold flats, and the benchmarks are England & Wales indices. The statutory tripwires are the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 regime.
Where these numbers come from
The checker does not have its own view of what a service charge should cost. It measures yours against published research, and every figure it shows names the source it came from. Here is the whole list, so you can read what we read.
What a charge is measured against
Two indices, built from different sets of buildings. They disagree about the level, and that disagreement is why the checker shows a range instead of a single number.
- Service Charge Index 2025
The average charge for a one, two or three-bed flat, and the London average. Hamptons gathers this at the point of sale and estimates from it what the other flats in a building pay, so it covers the market broadly and leans towards flats that have recently changed hands.
- Service Charge Index 2024
What a lift, a concierge or a gym adds to a charge, and the ten-region table the regional adjustment is built from. The 2025 edition publishes no regional breakdown, so the regions come from this one.
- Service Charge Index 2026
How far building height and age move a charge, the spread from the cheapest tenth to the dearest, and the share each cost line typically takes. Drawn from 2,137 professionally managed estates covering 117,052 homes, which is why its average sits above the market-wide one.
- English Housing Survey 2023-24: leasehold experience fact sheet
What leaseholders themselves report paying, and the ground rent most of them are on. Self-reported, and lower than both indices — a useful floor on the range.
- Technical housing standards: nationally described space standard
The floor area a new flat of each bedroom count must reach, used only to say whether yours is unusually large or small for its bedrooms. It is a minimum for new build, never an average, and there is no published per-square-foot service charge benchmark for flats — so the per-square-foot figures the checker shows are its own band divided by the area you give.
The rates behind the money figures
Turning an annual charge into a monthly cost, a mortgage it displaces and a lump sum takes a rate. Both are pinned to a date rather than read live, so a figure can be reproduced.
- Weekly mortgage rate watch
The 5.59% average two-year fix behind the borrowing a charge displaces and the lump sum it is worth. Pinned to that week rather than read live, so the same inputs always give the same answer.
- Leasehold enfranchisement valuation rates: consultation
The 6.5% rate ground rent is capitalised at. The government's own review of tribunal decisions found 88% of them used between 6% and 7%, averaging 6.5%. There is no settled rate, which is what the consultation is about.
The rules the accounts read checks
Thresholds, time limits and caps come from the legislation itself, so they change when it does rather than when someone remembers to edit a sentence.
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
The 18-month limit on demanding an old cost, the consultation thresholds for major works and long agreements, the right to a summary of costs, and when that summary must be certified by an accountant.
- Building Safety Act 2022, Schedule 8
The caps on what a qualifying lease can be charged towards remediation, including the flat value below which the cap is nil, and the rule that no more than a tenth may be charged in a year.
Every link above was opened and its figures checked on 7 Sep 2026. Where a source has since published a newer edition, the checker keeps the one it was verified against until the figures are re-checked, so a benchmark never changes without someone reading the new number first.