© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
For years the interests of the management fee Paying leaseholder has long been forgotten, and the interests of the housebuilders themselves and subsequent freeholders has been the priority for the residential managing agent.
Generally there is only one outcome of this for leaseholders: poor service levels and inflated service charges to line the pockets of those who only have a commercial interest in your residential development and your investment.
It’s a fact that nobody likes to pay a service charge; this is after all your hard-earned money, and you wouldn’t spend it frivolously, so why let your managing agent spend it that way for you?
It is time to take control and remove the conflict of interest between your managing agent and the other parties to your lease. There are a few simple steps you can take to achieve this.
Explore the possibility of becoming a director of your RMC. Commonly nominee directors from the developer will stand as the directors of your management company. Not surprisingly they may be influenced by your agent not to hand over control to the leaseholders for several years, or even worse, the agent may appoint themselves as the director to avoid the residents gaining control.
The agent most likely has no authority to stand as a director and if this has happened on your development, then it is worthwhile speaking to a managing agent and asking them to investigate. Not all agents are in the fortunate position to have new developments handed to them, so other agents who genuinely have the leaseholders’ interests at heart will be motivated to get involved as there is a strong possibility they will succeed in becoming the new agent once you have a residential board of directors in place.
Once you’ve got your appointment as a director, you are in a much stronger position to implement change by getting to grips with your current managing agent, understanding how they operate and scrutinising their financial management ready for the takeover.
On the other hand, if becoming an RMC director is not an option, look into Right to Manage. The Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 empowers leaseholders to remove the current agent from managing their block and replacing them.
If there is no RMC in your lease and therefore the freeholder of your block is making all the decisions regarding maintenance and management on your behalf, without any form of consultation, then you have the power to bring this to an end. Empower yourself and your fellow leaseholders and commence the Right to Manage process.
Danielle Twittey is Operations Director at Estates Property Management