How often do tribunals reduce gardening and grounds charges?
Across 363 individually challenged gardening and grounds items in First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026, 41.9% were reduced or disallowed; where the tribunal made a reduction, the median was 50.8% (n=72 reductions with amounts stated). (n=363, as of 4 July 2026)
The figures on this page cover every individually challenged gardening and grounds 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 gardening and grounds items
| Outcome | Items | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reduced | 104 | 28.7% |
| Disallowed entirely | 48 | 13.2% |
| Allowed in full | 201 | 55.4% |
| Withdrawn | 5 | 1.4% |
Most common grounds when the tribunal cut the charge
- Works not necessary — 14 items
- Standard not reasonable (s19(1)(b)) — 8 items
- Poor standard of work — 29 items
- Apportionment error — 14 items
- Not payable under the lease — 19 items
- Demand formally invalid — 4 items
- Landlord could not evidence the cost — 46 items
- Costs unreasonably incurred (s19(1)(a)) — 79 items
By tribunal region
| Region | Items (n) | Reduced or disallowed | Median reduction when reduced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern | 48 | 54.2% | 51.9% |
| Southern | 81 | 48.1% | 56.7% |
| Northern | 47 | 40.4% | 55.4% |
| London | 170 | 37.6% | 50% |
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.