Service Charge Disputes in Plymouth
3 published tribunal decisions from in and around Plymouth, with what each one actually decided. The figures Plymouth City Council publishes, rather than a national average.
- Local authority
- Plymouth City Council
- Service
- Service charge disputes
- County
- Devon
- Published decisions
- 3 tribunal decisions
Service Charge Cases Decided in and Around Plymouth
| Development | Case | What the tribunal decided, and why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 79 Charles Cross Apartments, Constantine Street | CHI/00HG/LSC/2020/0052 28 February 2022 | Sixty leaseholders challenged over 200,000 pounds of service charge and the tribunal allowed almost all of it, calling their bundle selective and their motivation questionable, and refusing to protect them from the landlord's costs. The one real win: a landlord whose insurance was voided back to inception had not kept the building insured, so could not recover the premium. |
| 96 and 146 Rothesay Gardens | Plymouth Community Homes v Crisplane [2025] EWCA Civ 346 26 February 2025 | Binding Court of Appeal authority, and it names a Plymouth development. The landlord was obliged to repair the roofs but could not recover the 7,965 pounds per flat, because the lease excluded the roof from the recoverable schedule. A general sweeping-up clause could not bring back a cost expressly excluded earlier in the same clause. Being legally obliged to do the work is not the same as being able to charge for it. |
| 96 and 146 Rothesay Gardens | Crisplane v Plymouth Community Homes [2024] UKUT 15 (LC) 16 January 2024 | The Upper Tribunal stage of the same Plymouth case, which set the first-instance decision aside after county court judgments had already been entered on it. The statutory repairing covenant implied into right-to-buy leases obliges the landlord to repair the roof but says nothing about the lessee paying for it, and no payment obligation can be implied. On right-to-buy leases especially, check the contribution clause against the repairing schedules line by line before budgeting a roof. |
What the Council Charges an Empty Flat in Plymouth
An empty flat in a Plymouth block is charged the full council tax plus a premium once it has been empty a year: 100 per cent after one year, 200 after five and 300 after ten. From 1 April 2025 a furnished second home carries a 100 per cent premium as well. Plymouth publishes the bands but not the date the empty-homes premium itself started, only the date its exceptions did, so do not read 1 April 2025 as the start of the empty charge. None of this is a service charge matter and we do not bill it. It is here because it is the first question a director is asked once a probate flat sits empty, and the answer is set by the council rather than by the lease.
What We Do About Service Charge Disputes in Plymouth
Service charge disputes in Plymouth is one part of managing the building. The 3 decisions above are what we work from:
- Test a disputed item against how the tribunal has decided the same argument locally, while it is still a question and not yet an application.
- Answer the empty-property question with Plymouth City Council's own premium rather than a general rule.
We charge a fixed annual fee for management and take no commission on contractor work. A building in Plymouth pays the contractor's price, not the contractor's price plus ours.
How This Works, in General
The law here is the same in Plymouth as it is anywhere in England, and it is set out in full on our service-charge-financial-management page rather than repeated on this one. What changes locally is above: the authority, the figures, and what the tribunal has actually done with cases nearby.
Other Services in Plymouth
Everything else we do in the area is on the Plymouth page, and the full matrix is at services by area.