Meet LeaseCheck — Challenge your service charge

Finance

LeaseCheck

Challenge your service charge

What LeaseCheck does

Your service charge went up again and the accounts explain nothing. LeaseCheck is the leaseholder's toolkit for England and Wales: a private, offline ledger and rights companion for anyone paying a managing agent or freeholder for a flat they own.

Start with the ledger. Enter each year's demand line by line — management fee, buildings insurance, cleaning, repairs, reserve fund — and LeaseCheck shows exactly which items jumped, by how much, and how your total has moved year on year. When the only explanation on the demand is one word, your own records become the evidence.

Then run the checks. LeaseCheck walks your charges and demands through the statutory questions that decide what you actually have to pay. Was a Section 20 consultation carried out for major works costing you more than 250 pounds? Were costs demanded within 18 months of being incurred, as Section 20B requires? Did the demand include the summary of rights and obligations that makes it payable at all? Each check explains the rule in plain English and cites the statute so you can quote it with confidence.

When you need answers, send the right letter. Built-in templates cover Section 21 requests for a summary of relevant costs, Section 22 requests to inspect the invoices and receipts behind that summary, follow-ups when you get silence, and a formal dispute letter setting out the items you challenge and why.

If it goes further, the First-tier Tribunal was designed for leaseholders to use without a solicitor. LeaseCheck organises your evidence — demands, accounts, photos, correspondence, and your line-item history — into a dated binder you can export as a single PDF for the tribunal, your MP, or the other leaseholders in your block.

Everything stays on your phone. No account, no cloud, nothing shared with your agent. LeaseCheck is a record-keeping and rights-reference tool, not legal advice — but it puts the rules, the deadlines, and the paperwork in one place so you stop paying blind.

• Year-on-year line-item service charge ledger with increase tracking • Statutory red-flag checks: Section 20 consultation, 18-month rule, summary of rights • Section 20 consultation timeline tracker with stage deadlines • Section 21 and Section 22 request letters plus dispute templates • Tribunal evidence binder with dated exhibits and PDF export • Plain-English rights reference for leaseholders • Fully offline and private — no account, no login

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

• Charge Ledger — Enter each service charge year line by line (management fee, insurance, cleaning, repairs, reserve fund) and see which items jumped, by how much, and how the total has moved year on year — the evidence base for every challenge.
• Red-Flag Checker — A guided statutory questionnaire run against your actual charges: missing Section 20 consultation on works over 250 GBP per leaseholder, costs demanded outside the 18-month Section 20B window, demands missing the summary of rights and obligations, and unreasonable admin charges — each flag explains the rule and cites the statute.
• Section 20 Tracker — Tracks a major-works consultation stage by stage — Notice of Intention, estimates stage, award — with the 30-day observation deadlines for each stage so you never lose a right by missing a date.
• Letter Library — Fill-in templates for Section 21 summary-of-costs requests, Section 22 inspection requests, silence follow-ups, and formal dispute letters — each generated with your details, dated, logged, and tracked against the statutory response deadline.
• Tribunal Binder — An evidence binder for a First-tier Tribunal application: demands, accounts, photos, correspondence, and your ledger history organised as dated exhibits and exported as a single paginated PDF.
• Rights Reference — A plain-English, offline guide to leaseholder rights — reasonableness under s.19, accounts rights under s.21/s.22, consultation under s.20, the 18-month rule, and the tribunal route — each entry citing its statute and stamped with a law-current-as-of date.

Why we built it

England has 4.83M leasehold dwellings and the average flat's service charge hit roughly 2,300 GBP/yr after an 11% jump in 2024. Service charges are the number one issue at the government's own advice service (12,000+ enquiries a year), yet challenging them requires knowing the 18-month rule, Section 20 consultation ri…

What makes it different

LEASE (the government advice service) offers free articles, template letters, and a phone line — information only: no ledger of your actual charges, no red-flag checker run against your own demands, no Section 20 deadline tracker, no tribunal evidence binder. That is exactly where LeaseCheck's paid tier lives, deliber…

Who it's for

Freelancers, contractors, and small-business owners who want their numbers right at tax time without renting a SaaS to do it.

In one line: Challenge your service charge

Try it

See the Challenge your service charge for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use LeaseCheck, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.