Services

Service Charge Arrears Recovery

Protecting property management services with rapid and effective recovery services.

Excellent property management relies on sufficient funds being available to the managing agent to carry out maintenance or provide key services to leaseholders.

Clearly, pursuing service charge arrears can be contentious, and subject to potential confusion under changing legislation regarding the scope of what is included, but it is important that defaulting leaseholders do not affect the property manager’s ability to deliver services and, therefore, their reputation.

Many firms now purport to offer service charge collection services but approach collection as standard debt recovery without appreciating the complexities and fine detail that collecting lease-based charges involves - and without the experienced experts that understand the issues likely to be raised by leaseholders during the collection process.

At JB Leitch, we have many years’ experience in service charge arrears recovery on both residential and commercial premises.  From receipt of instructions through to final remittance, our turnaround times are impressive.  In the vast majority of cases, all costs are recovered from the defaulting lessee, and we can also fund court fees on your behalf pending recovery. Each of our clients benefit from a dedicated Client Relationship Manager to coordinate  and communicate progress, supported by a large pool of highly trained process, systems and administrative staff.

Our case management system is geared to collecting property-based debts, providing a breakdown of service charges, administration charges, interest, insurance, etc. that we can analyse in our reporting to you.  We can also report by development, landlord or other third party.

If there is ground rent also outstanding, JB Leitch can obtain this information from the landlord and seek recovery for both sums or, if not, simply notify the landlord that the leaseholder is in breach.  For dual service charge and ground rent claims, both clients will be notified and updated simultaneously.  Dual collection brings benefits to all parties: on a three party lease the interests of the landlord and management company are entirely aligned and, for the leaseholder, there is only one set of legal fees.

Our service charge recovery process typically includes:

  • File / Case set up and searches
  • Analysis of all leases, arrears and archival information
  • Ongoing client communications & reporting
  • Letters of claim and payment processing
  • Dealing with lessee disputes
  • Ensuring compliance with SRA and GDPR regulations in data management and archiving
  • Preparation and submission of claim to Court
  • Processing of Court and Judgment forms preparation and submission of judgment to Court
  • Acquisition of lessee mortgage account details
  • Letters of claim sent to lender
  • Detailed breakdown of case costing provided to lender
  • CMS information update for reporting purposes
  • Providing documentation to lender in compliance with their individual requirement

Key Contacts

Karen Bolland
Mark Scarisbrick