Who Owns Your Freehold?
The freeholder owns your building; the managing agent usually runs it. Search the freeholders behind published tribunal decisions — and see what happened when leaseholders challenged a bill
League Tables
Everything here comes from decisions the tribunal has published, and every figure shows how many cases it is based on.
Two different kinds of case — worth knowing which you are looking at.
A service charge dispute is a leaseholder saying "this bill is too high", and the tribunal deciding whether it was fair. This is the table to read if you want to know how a freeholder's charges have held up to scrutiny.
A Section 20 consultation case is the reverse: the landlord asking to be let off consulting residents before major works. The landlord is applying, no money comes off anyone's bill, and the tribunal usually says yes.
The two tables above are kept completely separate on purpose. A landlord winning a Section 20 case is not a leaseholder outcome, and combining the two would make one look like the other.
How to read this page
- Freeholder or managing agent? The freeholder owns the building and is named on your lease. The managing agent is the firm that runs it day to day and sends the bills. They are usually different companies, and a dispute can involve either. Managing agents are on their own page.
- Being here is not an accusation. A freeholder on this list has been to tribunal — that is all. A landlord owning thousands of flats will appear more often than one owning a single block.
- What kind of landlord matters. A council, a housing association, a commercial company and your own residents' company are very different things. Where the freeholder is the residents' own company, the leaseholders own it between them — so a leaseholder "winning" is, indirectly, winning against themselves. We say which is which, using Companies House where it tells us (housing associations are registered as societies) and the name otherwise.
- Two very different kinds of case, kept apart. A bill challenge is a leaseholder saying a charge is too high, and the tribunal deciding whether it was fair. A request to skip consultation is the landlord asking to be let off consulting residents before major works — no money comes off anyone's bill. Pooling them would make a landlord's win look like a leaseholder's.
- The freeholder is usually a named party. Unlike managing agents, freeholders are normally listed at the top of the decision as the respondent, so you should see them when you click through.
- One row per company, and no group totals. Names are matched to Companies House and counted once. We do not combine companies into groups here: many freeholds are held by numbered companies that share an administrator's address, and we will not assert that two companies are connected without documentary evidence of ownership.
- Private individuals are excluded. Many freeholds are owned by a person rather than a company. We do not publish individuals' names against tribunal disputes.
- Most service charges never reach a tribunal. This is only the disputed minority, so it is not a report card on any landlord's overall conduct.
Source: ServiceCharges.AI analysis of published First-tier Tribunal service charge decisions. Last updated: loading…
Search Your Freeholder
Your freeholder is named on your lease and usually on your service charge demand. Click any row to see what the cases were about. If yours is not here, it may not have been to tribunal — or we may not have been able to confirm the company yet.
Looking for who manages your block rather than who owns it? Managing agent records — each one lists every decision naming that firm, links to the published judgment on GOV.UK, and quotes any tribunal criticism verbatim.
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Showing agents with 10+ tribunal appearances. Data updates daily as new decisions are published.
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