If a leaseholder in one of your blocks asked you this afternoon which of last year's repairs needed a section 20 consultation and which did not, could you answer without going back to the file?
Most directors of portfolio cannot, and that is the gap that turns a routine roof repair into a tribunal case with your name on the correspondence. The rules are not complicated. The evidence trail around them is where portfolios come unstuck.
The stakes: who carries the cost when consultation is missed
Under the leasehold framework in England and Wales, a landlord must consult leaseholders before charging them for major works above a threshold, and the consultation runs to fixed windows. Get it wrong and the landlord's ability to recover the full cost through the service charge is limited, which means the shortfall lands on the block's accounts and eventually on your budget. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 tightened the surrounding regime, and the government has been consulting on further reform of the major works rules themselves, so the direction of travel is toward more transparency, not less.
What are major works under section 20, in plain terms
Major works are the repairs, maintenance and improvements that cost any one leaseholder more than the statutory threshold, which is why they trigger a formal consultation rather than a line in the annual service charge. In practice that means roofs, external walls, windows, lifts, drainage, structural work and anything else that lands as a large one-off bill on an individual flat.
The consultation itself is a process with stages, and the stages have clocks. Southwark Council's own guidance for homeowners sets out the pattern clearly: a two-stage consultation opens with a notice of intention describing the work, the reasons for it, and an invitation to comment, and leaseholders have 30 days to respond. The second stage is a notice of proposal with estimated costs, the estimated cost to the leaseholder, a cost breakdown, and an invitation to inspect the contract documents, again with 30 days to comment. Where the work is carried out under a long-term agreement, a single-stage notice applies, and it still carries the 30-day window. You can read the full stage-by-stage description in Southwark Council's section 20 guidance.
There is also the section 20b notice, which tells leaseholders how much has been spent so far when there is no final calculation yet. That one is easy to forget and easy to challenge.
The evidence test: what an inspector, tribunal or buyer will ask to see
Nobody asks whether you intended to consult. They ask for the paper. In a residential block, that paper usually lives in three places that do not talk to each other: the managing agent's consultation file, the building manager's maintenance records, and the director's own inbox.
What good looks like is a single, dated trail for each qualifying project. The notice of intention, the date it was issued, the 30-day window, the comments received and how they were answered. Then the notice of proposal, the cost breakdown, the estimated cost per leaseholder, and evidence that the contract documents were available for inspection. If the work ran under a long-term agreement, the single-stage notice and the rates it relied on. If spend ran ahead of a final calculation, the section 20b notice and the date it went out.
An insurer or a buyer's solicitor will ask a simpler question: can you show that every leaseholder liable for the cost received the right notice at the right stage, within the right window? If the answer depends on someone remembering which folder it went into, you have a problem before the tribunal does.
Where portfolios actually fail
The failure is rarely a missing consultation. It is a consultation that happened but cannot be proved, because the notice went out from a shared mailbox, the 30-day window was not logged, or the cost breakdown in the notice of proposal does not match the final invoice. In a block with a lift replacement or a roof renewal, that mismatch is exactly what a leaseholder challenge will fasten on.
The other recurring gap is the reserve fund. The government's consultation sought views on mandating reserve funds, which tells you where the policy is heading. If your blocks are under-reserved, the major works bill arrives as a shock to leaseholders, and shocked leaseholders challenge. You can read the scope of the reforms in the GOV.UK consultation on strengthening leaseholder protections.
The government response confirms the direction: a minimum of five complementary statutory instruments to be laid in Parliament, with leaseholders starting to see changes during 2027, and measures including reform of the section 20 major works regime and mandatory qualifications for managing agents. That is in the published government response. The practical read for a director is that the evidence standard is rising, and the managing agent qualification requirement will change who you can put in front of a leaseholder meeting.
What to check this week
Pick the three largest major works projects across your portfolio in the last two years. For each, ask the managing agent to produce the notice of intention, the notice of proposal, the dates both went out, and the comments log. If any of those four items is missing or undated, you have found your exposure before a leaseholder did.
Then check the reserve position on the same three blocks. A block that is collecting enough to absorb a roof renewal does not generate the same volume of section 20 challenges as one that is not.
Your 60-second self-check
- Could you produce, today, the dated notice of intention and notice of proposal for every major works project in your portfolio over the last two years?
- Can you show that each notice went out with a full 30-day window and that comments were logged and answered?
- Do you know which of your blocks are under-reserved against the next likely major works bill?
If any of those gave you pause, the free 5-minute Director's Risk Check is built for exactly this. It gives you a control score across your portfolio and a board-ready briefing, so you walk into the next senior management meeting with answers rather than a list of follow-ups for the managing agent. You can also send it to a colleague to complete if the files sit with them.
Herman's verdict
A section 20 consultation is not a letter you sent. It is a dated sequence you can put on the table when someone challenges the bill, and if you cannot put it on the table, the consultation may as well not have happened.
— Herman
Until next time — keep the evidence closer than the deadline.
Walk into your next senior management meeting with the answers
The free Director's Risk Check for UK portfolios takes five minutes. No sign-up to see your score.
- Your control score across compliance, evidence, oversight, cost and renewals
- The breach exposure in your portfolio, with the official source for each penalty
- A board-ready briefing with your three priorities and a 30/60/90-day plan
About HermanWa
HermanWa is a building compliance and operations platform for property and facilities teams in the United Kingdom and Singapore, with portfolios across the Gulf. It keeps one auditable file per building — statutory deadlines, inspection evidence, contractor work, energy and carbon — and its AI assistant, Herman, answers questions about your buildings in plain English. HermanWa tracks obligations including fire risk assessments and fire door checks, Building Safety Act duties, Legionella (ACOP L8), EICR, gas safety and EPC in the UK, and SCDF fire certificates, Periodic Facade and Structural Inspections, lift permits and Green Mark in Singapore. Directors can check their exposure with the free Director's Risk Check.