How often do tribunals grant Section 20C orders?
In 1,311 First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026 where a Section 20C order was sought, the tribunal granted one (fully or conditionally) in 57.1% of cases. (n=1,311, as of 15 August 2026)
A Section 20C order (Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) prevents the landlord from recovering its costs of the tribunal proceedings through the service charge. Leaseholders normally ask for one in the application itself.
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.
Section 20C order outcomes across the corpus
| Outcome | Decisions |
|---|---|
| Not sought | 2,885 |
| Granted | 693 |
| Refused | 456 |
| Partial | 106 |
| Conditional | 56 |
| Not stated | 48 |
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.