How often do tribunals reduce administration charge charges?
Across 646 individually challenged administration charge items in First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026, 66.6% were reduced or disallowed; where the tribunal made a reduction, the median was 49.7% (n=39 reductions with amounts stated). (n=646, as of 15 August 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 | 56 | 8.7% |
| Disallowed entirely | 374 | 57.9% |
| Allowed in full | 167 | 25.9% |
| Withdrawn | 14 | 2.2% |
Most common grounds when the tribunal cut the charge
- Costs unreasonably incurred (s19(1)(a)) — 131 items
- Duplication of charges — 25 items
- No Section 21B summary of rights — 5 items
- Landlord could not evidence the cost — 97 items
- Not payable under the lease — 181 items
- Other grounds — 87 items
- Demand formally invalid — 56 items
- Fee excessive for service delivered — 26 items
By tribunal region
| Region | Items (n) | Reduced or disallowed | Median reduction when reduced |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 355 | 65.9% | 50% |
| Eastern | 63 | 74.6% | 21.5% |
| Southern | 114 | 66.7% | 59.2% |
| Midlands | 55 | 58.2% | 30.2% |
| Northern | 59 | 69.5% | 40.3% |
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: 4,244 decisions covering 18,031 individually disputed items, last updated 15 August 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.