As a sector, we are committed to delivering transparent service charges and high-quality resident and leaseholder engagement on charges. This will be a key focus of this year’s Leaseholder & Tenant Service Charges Conference 2025, as we consider how to ensure transparency and clarity in a period of significant policy change.

Session Spotlight: Implementation and Delivery of the Building Safety Act

I'll be chairing a session that dives deep into the real-world impact of the Building Safety Act 2022 on service charges. We’ll explore:

• What building safety costs are recoverable through service charges, for tenants and leaseholders.
• Creating consistent charging frameworks for longer term planning.
• Tackling resident concerns around building safety costs.

Tenants and leaseholders are understandably concerned about building safety costs. This can come in multiple forms of anxiety, including worries about the building itself, concerns about cost of charges – particularly buildings insurance, and anxiety around being able to sublet or sell in the case of leaseholders. Due to this, getting communication right for building safety measure service charges is of utmost importance.

Speakers will be sharing how they develop transparent and sensitive communications about service charges for building safety, managing this in mixed tenure blocks, and planning for the future.

The majority of the sector with buildings over 11 metres have signed up to the Joint plan to accelerate social housing remediation and improve resident experience. One of the commitments includes allowing subletting of shared ownership properties affected by the building safety crisis. We’ll consider this in the session too, discussing what an increase in subletting means for service charge management and transparency.