How often do tribunals reduce legal and professional cost charges?
Across 1,033 individually challenged legal and professional cost items in First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026, 53% were reduced or disallowed; where the tribunal made a reduction, the median was 40.9% (n=139 reductions with amounts stated). (n=1,033, as of 15 August 2026)
The figures on this page cover every individually challenged legal and professional cost 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 legal and professional cost items
| Outcome | Items | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Reduced | 184 | 17.8% |
| Disallowed entirely | 364 | 35.2% |
| Allowed in full | 442 | 42.8% |
| Withdrawn | 11 | 1.1% |
Most common grounds when the tribunal cut the charge
- Landlord could not evidence the cost — 141 items
- Costs unreasonably incurred (s19(1)(a)) — 269 items
- Demand formally invalid — 28 items
- Not payable under the lease — 181 items
- Other grounds — 102 items
- Standard not reasonable (s19(1)(b)) — 11 items
- Section 20B 18-month time limit — 13 items
- Duplication of charges — 12 items
By tribunal region
| Region | Items (n) | Reduced or disallowed | Median reduction when reduced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern | 100 | 56% | 42.8% |
| Southern | 154 | 55.8% | 40.1% |
| London | 624 | 51.8% | 41.7% |
| Northern | 96 | 49% | 37.5% |
| Midlands | 59 | 61% | 42.4% |
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.