How often do tribunals reduce administration charge charges?
Across 516 individually challenged administration charge items in First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026, 66.7% were reduced or disallowed; where the tribunal made a reduction, the median was 50% (n=26 reductions with amounts stated). (n=516, as of 4 July 2026)
The figures on this page cover every individually challenged administration charge item in our corpus of published First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions, and are recomputed nightly.
About these figures: Outcomes reflect disputes that reached the First-tier Tribunal, not portfolio-wide quality. Small samples are noisy; every figure links to the underlying decisions.
Outcomes for challenged administration charge items
| Outcome | Items | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reduced | 42 | 8.1% |
| Disallowed entirely | 302 | 58.5% |
| Allowed in full | 140 | 27.1% |
| Withdrawn | 9 | 1.7% |
Most common grounds when the tribunal cut the charge
- Other grounds — 73 items
- Not payable under the lease — 136 items
- Demand formally invalid — 44 items
- Fee excessive for service delivered — 19 items
- Duplication of charges — 22 items
- No Section 21B summary of rights — 4 items
- Landlord could not evidence the cost — 83 items
- Costs unreasonably incurred (s19(1)(a)) — 109 items
By tribunal region
| Region | Items (n) | Reduced or disallowed | Median reduction when reduced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midlands | 48 | 54.2% | 30.2% |
| Eastern | 50 | 76% | — |
| Southern | 89 | 65.2% | 76.3% |
| Northern | 54 | 68.5% | 40.3% |
| London | 275 | 67.3% | 63.3% |
Methodology
These statistics are computed from the published decisions of the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) in service charge cases (case types LSC, LIS and LDC). Each decision is parsed into a structured record — the sums challenged, the sums allowed, the outcome per cost head, and the orders made — and the aggregates on this page are recomputed nightly in plain arithmetic from those records. No figure on this page is estimated, modelled or hand-typed; each carries its sample size. Current corpus: 2,383 decisions covering 12,898 individually disputed items, last updated 4 July 2026.
Read this before quoting: Outcomes reflect disputes that reached the First-tier Tribunal, not portfolio-wide quality. Small samples are noisy; every figure links to the underlying decisions.