Missing landlord address does not make service charge demands invalid, Upper Tribunal holds

The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) has held that a service charge demand without the landlord's address is not invalid but only suspended until that information is given, a point affecting leaseholders and landlords.

Mr Birch is the freeholder of 55-57 High Street, Arundel, West Sussex. Mr Meredith holds a long lease of the residential parts of the building, which comprises six flats. The flats have been sub-let, and the proceedings concerned Mr Meredith's obligations as head-lessee.

Mr Meredith applied to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) under section 27A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 for a decision on whether service charges for 2023-24 were payable. The sums demanded came to £46,918.26 and covered drainage works, legal fees, pointing and scaffolding.

The First-tier Tribunal found the demands invalid because they did not include the landlord's address, as section 47 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 requires. It then considered whether the charges would have been payable if properly demanded, and reduced them by just over £400. Mr Birch appealed against one aspect of its decision, which concerned the orders about costs and the leaseholder's tribunal fee.

The decision

Upper Tribunal Judge Elizabeth Cooke, deciding the appeal on written representations in [2026] UKUT 6 (LC) on 7 January 2026, allowed the appeal. She held that the First-tier Tribunal made an error of law, set its decision aside and substituted her own.

The reasoning

Section 47 provides that where a demand lacks the landlord's name and address, the sums are treated as not due until that information is given by notice. The judge held that this effect is suspensory only. It does not invalidate the demand or prevent recovery. The landlord may give the information at any time, and the charges are then treated as due. She relied on earlier Upper Tribunal decisions in Cannon v 38 Lambs Conduit LLP [2016] UKUT 371 (LC) and Tedla v Cameret Court Residents Association Ltd [2015] UKUT 0221 (LC).

The First-tier Tribunal had wrongly treated the leaseholder as completely successful. The judge held that this error meant it started from the wrong position when considering orders under section 20C of the 1985 Act and paragraph 5A of Schedule 11 to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, and whether to order reimbursement of the leaseholder's fee.

The First-tier Tribunal had also said the landlord "just about scraped through" in showing its costs were reasonably incurred. The judge said the standard is the balance of probabilities, and it was not right to interfere with the landlord's contractual rights because the balance was not tipped very far. She also found irrelevant its comment about future remedial work, as no such costs had been incurred or charged.

Substituting her decision, she noted that on whether the charges were payable, the landlord was overwhelmingly successful: a reduction of just over £400 against nearly £47,000. She also did not accept that the leaseholder would have dropped his challenge had the address been supplied, since section 47 received only a brief mention in his statement of case and the case centred on the costs incurred. She made the section 20C and paragraph 5A orders in respect of the landlord's costs in the First-tier Tribunal and refused to order reimbursement of the leaseholder's fee. She did not need to consider the landlord's allegations about the leaseholder's conduct.

Sources

• Simon Birch v Paul Meredith [2026] UKUT 6 (LC), Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), 7 January 2026