Invoices

Invoices for annual charges

If you own the lease, we invoice you every year. This is to pay your share of the landlord's costs to maintain and repair the structure and common parts of your block and estate, and to provide services to your block and estate, as well as management costs. The invoice also includes the annual charge for building insurance and ground rent. 

Every year, we bill you in advance for daily service charges, excluding major works. In late March, we estimate the cost to cover services from April to March next year.

When the actual cost of services is known (by the following September), your service charge account will be adjusted to reflect it. This will result in a credit or debit to your account.

We will write to tell you of the actual cost and to let you know the amount of any change to your account.

For more information about annual service charges, please refer to the following facts:

• Invoices for Estimated and Actual Service Charges
• Service Charges - What you pay for
• Overview of how your charges are calculated

Invoices for major work schemes

Our Major Works Programme will benefit all our residents. You will not pay towards internal works to tenants’ homes, but you will need to pay your share of the costs of works to communal fixtures and fittings, external structure and fabric of the building.

If we are carrying out major works to your block, we will invoice you on an annual basis similar to day to day charges. As major works invoices can be for large sums of money and can run over several years, we issue you an invoice in September for the actual costs that were incurred the previous year. This way we more accurately invoice you for cost of works that were carried out during the previous year, rather than an estimated cost in April in advance of the year.  

You should contact us within 28 days of the date of the invoice and we'll talk to you about your options for paying for the works.

Some leaseholders may meet the qualifying criteria for a variety of flexible repayment options for invoices over £2,000.

Incorrect charges?

If you think your bill may be incorrect, please contact us on 020 7364 5015 or email us at leaseholder.services@towerhamlets.gov.uk

We’ll send you a detailed breakdown of how we calculated your charges. If you still think some service charge items are incorrect or want to raise a dispute, let us know. We’ll be happy to meet you or talk with you on the phone.

If we’re unable to sort out the issue this way, write to us explaining the part of your service charge that you are challenging and why. We will investigate and respond to you in writing confirming our findings. 

Please continue to pay your charges while we investigate. If we uphold your dispute, we'll credit back that part of your service charge. This could be because:

• a service has not been provided, or
• a service falls below our standards, or
• a part of the service charge is not recoverable by law

If we do not uphold your dispute, we will tell you why we believe your service charge is reasonable. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to take your dispute to an independent tribunal. We will give you details of this service and the Leasehold Advisory Service (free independent legal advice service) when we write to you.

First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber

The First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber (FTPT) is the forum for dealing with service charges and other leasehold issues. The tribunal aims to provide easier and affordable access to resolve leasehold disputes.

It can:

• Determine whether a service charge or administration charge is payable. This also applies to service charges which have already been paid. 
• Vary a lease that doesn’t make adequate provision for a service charge or other charges. 
• Decide whether to waive or modify the landlord’s need to consult with leaseholders before carrying out major works. 
• Decide if leaseholders can be charged for the works via the service charge. 
• Award costs where a leaseholder or landlord has acted unreasonably.

Address: 10 Alfred Place, London, WC1E 7LR

Tel: 020 7446 7700
Email: rplondon@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.justice.gov.ukexternal link

An application form can downloaded from this website.