Are leaseholders winning more service charge challenges over time?
The share of challenged service charge items reduced or disallowed by the First-tier Tribunal moved from 13.6% in 2019 (n=103) to 42.6% in 2026 (n=1,058). (n=12,898, as of 4 July 2026)
The table below shows, for each calendar year of decision, how many decisions and individually challenged items the corpus holds, what share of those items the tribunal reduced or disallowed, and the median reduction where one was made. Years with fewer than 10 items are omitted.
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.
Year by year
| Year | Decisions | Items (n) | Reduced or disallowed | Median reduction when reduced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 9 | 103 | 13.6% | 27.2% |
| 2020 | 107 | 580 | 43.4% | 47.7% |
| 2021 | 461 | 2,467 | 40.5% | 44.1% |
| 2022 | 442 | 2,184 | 35.6% | 34.5% |
| 2023 | 373 | 2,051 | 39.9% | 43.8% |
| 2024 | 354 | 2,041 | 48.3% | 50% |
| 2025 | 465 | 2,413 | 43.1% | 50% |
| 2026 | 171 | 1,058 | 42.6% | 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.