How often do leaseholders win at the First-tier Tribunal?
Across 2,378 First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions from 2019–2026, the leaseholder won outright in 12% of cases, secured a partial result in 32.8%, and the landlord won outright in 55.2%. (n=2,378, as of 4 July 2026)
"Winning" at the tribunal is rarely all-or-nothing: the most common outcome is a partial result in which some charges are cut and others upheld. Item by item, 41.4% of the 12,898 individually challenged items in the corpus were reduced or disallowed (n=12,898, as of 4 July 2026).
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.
Case-level outcomes
| Outcome | Decisions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Leaseholder won outright | 286 | 12% |
| Partial — some charges cut | 780 | 32.8% |
| Landlord won outright | 1,312 | 55.2% |
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.