Who is responsible for maintaining the structure of the building?
If you live in a freehold property, the answer to this question is simple – if you own the part of the property in question, you are responsible for repairing it.
In a leasehold property a similar logic applies, but you must first establish which bits of the property you own and are also responsible for repairing. This is because with a leasehold property there can be a number of important distinctions between the ownership of a part of the property and the legal responsibility to repair it.
In most leases, the flat owner owns the internal parts of their own flat – for instance, the plaster surfaces of the walls, the floorboards and the ceiling plasterwork. However, the structural or main parts of the building usually belong to the freeholder who has the legal responsibility to maintain and repair them and recovers the cost of doing this via a ‘service charge.’ The proportion of the service charge that you pay might also depend on the size of your flat although this depends on the way in which the leases in the building are written.
There are also some fairly common leasehold arrangements, where the property is effectively divided into ‘layers’ and in which each flat owner is responsible for maintaining their ‘slice’ of the property – both inside and out. This in theory at least makes redecoration and repair of the exterior an interesting exercise and you would hope that the flat owners would co-ordinate in terms of both timing and colour!
This type of arrangement is particularly common in maisonette or ‘one up one down’ type properties – often in leases granted in the 1970s .
In these ‘maisonette’ leases, it often also turns out that the top floor flat is entirely responsible for maintaining the roof and the ground floor flat is entirely responsible for the foundations.
If your lease has this kind of arrangement then often the only obligation to the freeholder is to pay a ‘ground rent’ – as the insurance of the building is also in the hands of the flat owners. This is at odds with the more frequently found ‘service charge’ type of arrangement mentioned above where the freeholder insurers and the flat owners reimburse the cost of this.
With a leasehold property, the starting point for answering any question about responsibility for maintenance and repair is the lease document itself.
Leases are not always easy to understand and it may help to get professional help in understanding and interpreting the terms in your lease, particularly before commencing major works, or incurring large expenditure as problems can arise if you carry out work on areas that are not owned by you, or that require the consent of the freeholder to carry out work.
If you do require assistance with this sort of issue a specialist solicitor, such as a member of ALEP will be well placed to provide you with help and practical guidance on these sorts of issues.
Mark Chick
Mark Chick is a solicitor dealing with leasehold issues. This note (being very general in its nature) is not a complete statement of the law in this area. It is therefore not a substitute for legal advice from a suitably qualified professional and should not be relied upon as such. No liability can therefore be accepted for any actions based on reliance upon it.
If you require legal advice please visit www.bishopandsewell.co.uk or email leasehold@bishopandsewell.co.uk