Think tank

I am a secure tenant of a housing association and I am concerned about service charges for the maintenance of communal areas. Although the road adjacent to my property is adopted by the council, my landlord organises the road sweeping and cleaning. The landlord also does other work in adopted areas for the council, which in return organises additional refuse collections for the landlord.

Apparently the landlord has decided not to charge freeholders or leaseholders who bought their properties under the preserved right to buy. There are also other residents who live nearby and have no contractual relationship with the landlord but enjoy the benefit of such services without paying anything towards the service charges.

The tenancy agreement states that the tenant can challenge these service charges at the leasehold valuation tribunal. However, my understanding is that a housing association tenant can only apply to such a tribunal if the fair rent is registered with a variable service charge. The service charges in the fair rent are not described as variable. Can you advise on a legal remedy?

There are statutory protections for tenants with regard to service charges, including the right for tenants to apply either to the courts or to the leasehold valuation tribunal for a decision as to whether they have to pay a service charge and if they do, how much they have to pay.

However if, as you say, a fair rent is registered for your property without a variable service charge, you cannot apply to the tribunal to have your service charge assessed because the service charge forms part of your rent.

When your rent was assessed to set a fair rent for your property, the rent officer would have taken into account the services that you receive, and the amount that you pay for the provision of services will now be registered as part of your rent.

If you do not feel that the rent officer has registered a fair rent for your property, you can object in writing to the rent officer. The matter will then be referred to a rent assessment committee.

Alternatively, if more than two years have passed since your rent was registered, you could apply to the rent officer for a new rent to be registered. Rosemary Hart

You are quite right that as a secure tenant of a housing association you can only go to the leasehold valuation tribunal if your rent is registered with a variable service charge.

At first glance it does sound odd that a landlord is including the costs of sweeping and cleaning an adopted road in a service charge – this sounds like a service it is carrying out for the council, and it should be paid by the council – but perhaps there were special problems with the council’s performance in this area and tenants in general wanted their landlord to do it.

Are you sure you are a secure tenant?

Your references to preserved right to buy make me wonder if in fact you were a secure tenant of a council that has transferred housing, including your home, to a housing association. If that is true you are not a secure tenant but an assured tenant with preserved right to buy.

If you are a secure tenant, then you should ask the rent officer to see if you have had a fair rent registered with a variable service charge – which is quite likely. You would then be able to go to a tribunal. It seems this is likely to be the case if the tenancy agreement says you have this right.

If you are an assured tenant then if you pay a variable service charge you can go to a tribunal. But before you do this, have you taken this up with the landlord? Is there a tenants’ association that would help you to talk it through with the landlord? What do your neighbours think? A collective approach may be more effective.

If the informal approach does not work or you do not like it, the landlord will have its own complaints system, and if you do not get satisfaction through that you have a right to go to the housing ombudsman – but you must complete your landlord’s internal complaints process first.

So you have a number of possible routes to find a remedy. Catherine Hand