What can you do when your managing agent doesn't reply?

How do you write a question that gets answered?

In writing. A phone call leaves nothing behind. If you do speak to someone, send a short email afterwards saying what was said.

One message, with numbered questions. Each question names the document, the page and the line it is about, and asks for one thing: an explanation, an amount, or a copy of an invoice.

Facts, not conclusions. The lift was out of service for three weeks in March can be checked. The managing agent does nothing cannot, and it works against the person who writes it.

To the right address. Use the contact the managing agent gives for leaseholders' questions, and keep a copy of what you sent.

What should you do if nothing comes back?

Send a short follow-up. Quote your first message and the date you sent it, ask whether it arrived, and ask when you can expect an answer. Keep it as neutral as the first: the aim is a reply, not an argument.

Try a second route as well. If you emailed, send the same by post and keep proof of posting, or use the managing agent's general address. People leave and inboxes change, and a second route rules that out.

If that goes unanswered too, ask for the managing agent's complaints procedure, and follow it. Keep any reference it gives you.

Who else can you write to?

The managing agent acts for whoever appointed it — usually your landlord, or a residents' management or right-to-manage company if your building has one. Writing to them, with copies of your unanswered messages, puts the silence in front of the people who instructed the agent.

If your building has a residents' association, ask whether others have raised the same point. A question several leaseholders are asking is harder to leave unanswered.

Why keep a dated record?

The first unanswered question is rarely the problem. A year later, nobody remembers when it was asked, what it said, or how many times it was followed up. Record each message and each reply — or the lack of one — at the time, with its date: what you asked, whom you wrote to, and what happened next. Three dated messages across a year say something one cannot.

If your questions are about the charge itself, reading the year-end accounts helps you make each one precise.

Can you ask to see the invoices?

In England and Wales, leaseholders have rights set out in statute: to see the invoices and receipts behind the service charge, and to ask an independent body to decide whether a charge was reasonable.

This page does not explain how to use them, because that depends on your lease and is a question for someone who has read it. But it changes what a question is. You are not asking a favour.

Should you stop paying while you query a charge?

What does Synclair do?

When something is worth raising, Synclair can draft a letter for you to check and send in your own name. You can record when you sent it, and then the reply or the outcome. If no reply is recorded four weeks after you record a letter as sent, Synclair emails you once to ask what happened, and you can switch that off. It can also draft a short follow-up letter, in your own name, that asks politely for a reply. Anything you report about the building stays on record with its date, and Synclair explains each line of your service charge that your documents show, comparing it with published figures where they exist.

Only owners pay for Synclair: never managers, insurers or suppliers.

One document is enough to start. It is free for three months, and the three months begin when your first analysis is ready — not when you sign up.

One document is enough to start: a budget, a charge demand, a statement or year-end accounts.