What is a Section 20C order?
A Section 20C order, made by the tribunal under Section 20C of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, prevents your landlord from recovering their legal costs of a dispute through the service charge. It stops a situation where you win your case but still pay for the landlord's lawyers. The tribunal grants it where it is just and equitable.
Section 20C fixes a specific unfairness. Many leases contain a clause letting the landlord add their legal and professional costs — including the cost of defending a service-charge challenge — back into the service charge. Without protection, that produces a perverse result: you take your landlord to the First-tier Tribunal, you win a reduction, and then the landlord's lawyers' bill lands on the next service charge demand, shared out among you and your neighbours.
What the order does
A Section 20C order blocks that. On a leaseholder's application, the tribunal can order that all or part of the landlord's costs of the proceedings are not to be treated as relevant costs when working out the service charge. In plain terms: the landlord cannot pass their costs of the dispute back to the leaseholders through the service charge.
How to ask for it
The single most important practical point: you have to ask. A Section 20C order is not granted automatically just because you succeed. Include the request as part of your main application when you challenge the charges — the application form has a place for it — so the tribunal can deal with your service-charge challenge and the costs question together at the same hearing.
Section 20C is closely related to the other costs protections leaseholders rely on. It sits alongside the general rule that, at the tribunal, each side usually bears its own costs. Section 20C deals with the separate problem of costs being smuggled back in via the service charge.
Why it matters
For many leaseholders, the fear of the landlord's costs is the biggest deterrent to challenging a charge at all. Understanding Section 20C removes a lot of that fear: with the order in place, the downside of a well-founded challenge is contained. It is a routine but powerful part of a leaseholder's toolkit when disputing charges under Section 19.
How this shows up in your service charges
Legal-cost recharges and "professional fees" often hide inside a service charge account. Our free AI audit reads your demand, accounts and lease and shows you, line by line, how much could be challengeable under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 — and flags where a Section 20C order would protect you if a dispute goes to the tribunal.
Start my free audit