What is a service charge?

A service charge is a payment to your landlord for services they provide to maintain a communal area. Examples could include insurance of apartment buildings, cleaning, hallway maintenance, gardens, drainage, access road/car parks.

Moving from pooled to proportional service charges

At Leeds Federated, the service charge you pay is currently calculated using a pooled system which means that all customers pay the same amount, regardless of the extent of services they receive.

From April 2025 we’ll move to a proportional system which means that customers will pay for the services they receive where they live.

The service charges affected by the change are grounds maintenance and cleaning. We’ll also be bringing in a new charge for fire risk assessments. You can find more information about the individual service charge changes below.

You’ll receive a statement in February 2025 showing the changes to your service charges from April 2025.

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• Grounds maintenance

The grounds maintenance service charge is for the communal land on the estate you live.
Under the current pooled system, all customers who have some communal land on their estate pay the same amount, regardless of the actual cost to maintain their estate. This means customers with small areas of communal land currently subsidise customers living on larger estates.

When we move to a proportional system in April 2025 customers will be charged the costs to maintain their estate only. Moving to proportional charges is a fairer way of calculating how much you pay for grounds maintenance and reflects the benefit you receive where you live.

To calculate your new grounds maintenance charge, we’ve done a detailed survey to measure the communal land where you live. We’ve also looked at the tasks our Community Spaces team carry out and the time it takes to maintain the land.

The survey showed some areas of communal land were either being maintained regularly and not being charged to customers or needed frequent one-off maintenance. In future, we’re proposing to carry out regular maintenance of these areas to improve the appearance of the area that you live in.

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• Cleaning

The cleaning service charge is for the internal communal areas in the block or sheltered scheme you live in. Under the current pooled system all customers pay the same cleaning charge regardless of the size of their internal communal areas and how much cleaning is needed.

When we move to a proportional system in April 2025 customers will be charged the costs to maintain their block or sheltered scheme only. Moving to proportional charges is a fairer way of calculating how much you pay for cleaning and reflects the benefit you receive where you live.

We’ve done a survey of all the communal areas to work out the size of the area that needs cleaning and the time it takes to clean it. We’ve used this information to calculate the new cleaning charge.

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• Fire risk assessments

Fire risk assessments identify risks of fire, look at ways to reduce the risks and ensure correct precautions and equipment are in place.

By law, we must do fire risk assessments for some of our homes, and these are generally flats located in blocks. Currently there’s no service charge for fire risk assessments but we’ve still been carrying them out.

From April 2025, we’ll introduce a service charge so that only customers that have an assessment where they live will be charged. This is a fairer approach.

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Help with paying your service charges

Grounds maintenance, cleaning and fire risk assessment service charges are eligible for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit so, even though some costs are increasing, many customers will not pay more.

If you are already struggling to pay your rent and service charges, get in touch with our Money Matters Team who can offer specialist advice and support. Call us on 0113 386 1000 or email us at hello@leedsfed.com

Disputing your service charge calculation

If you think we’ve made a mistake or there’s been an oversight with the calculation of your service charge, please email service.charges@lfha.co.uk and we’ll happily review the calculation. You can also call us on 0113 386 1000 and we’ll register your request.

If following this, you still wish to dispute the amount of your service charge, there’s a specific legal route to do this via the First-Tier Tribunal service. Further information can be found on the Lease Advice website. You can contact the Northern Region office on 0161 2379 491.

Making a complaint about the standard of service you receive

Our complaints process is also there if you’re unhappy with the standard of the service you’re receiving. Call us on 0113 386 1000 or email us at hello@leedsfed.com if you wish to make a complaint.