What is Section 22 — the right to inspect service charge documents?
Section 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 lets a leaseholder who has obtained a summary of relevant costs inspect the accounts, receipts, invoices and other documents behind it. The landlord must provide inspection facilities within one month of your notice, keep them available for two months, and do so free of charge.
Sections 21 and 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 work as a pair. Section 21 gives you the right to request a written summary of relevant costs — the total costs that make up your service charge for a period. Section 22 is the crucial next step: once you have that summary, you can go behind it and inspect the underlying paperwork.
What you can inspect
Section 22 entitles you, by written notice, to require the landlord to give you reasonable facilities for inspecting the accounts, receipts and other documents supporting the summary, and to take copies or extracts from them. In practice that means the actual contractor invoices, insurance documents, management agreements and bank statements that justify each line of the bill — not just the landlord's own summary of them.
Why it is such a powerful tool
Most service-charge disputes come down to a single question: was this cost actually incurred, and was it reasonable? The invoices answer that. A landlord confident in its figures will show them without fuss. A landlord that resists inspection, delays, or can only produce a summary but not the receipts behind it, is telling you something. A refusal is itself relevant evidence, and a First-tier Tribunal can draw adverse inferences from it.
How to exercise the right
First obtain the Section 21 summary if you do not already have one. Then serve a written notice on the landlord (or its named agent) requiring inspection under Section 22. Note the date — the one-month and two-month deadlines run from it. If the landlord provides everything, you can compare each invoice against the charge and test it for reasonableness under Section 19. If it does not, keep a record: that record supports both a tribunal application and any argument that the charge is not properly payable.
Section 22 is one of the most practical rights a leaseholder has, and it underpins almost every successful challenge — you cannot argue a charge is unreasonable until you have seen what it was actually spent on.
How this shows up in your service charges
The documents you inspect under Section 22 are exactly what our AI audit is built to read. Upload your demand, accounts and any invoices you obtain, and we'll show you line by line which costs look challengeable under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Ready to push back? Our challenge guide walks you through it.
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