Your service charge went up. What to compare.
A bigger demand arrived with a sentence about rising costs. That sentence is not an explanation, and finding the real one means reading a different document from the one that asked you for money.
The demand is the wrong document
It tells you what to pay and by when. It does not tell you what happened.
The budget is what the manager planned to spend. The accounts are what was actually spent. Almost everything worth knowing sits in the gap between those two, and most people never open either.
Read this year against last year, not against the budget
Comparing the accounts to the budget tells you whether the plan held. Comparing this year's accounts to last year's tells you what changed — which is the question you actually asked.
Watch for three things that make a rise invisible. Categories that split, so one line becomes two and neither looks bigger. Categories that merge, so two become one and the total looks like a jump. And a cost that moved between the budget and the actuals rather than genuinely increasing.
Only what survives those three is a real increase.
The lines worth a question
The management fee, stated separately from what contractors were paid. They are different things and are frequently shown as one.
Insurance. A single line, easily compared, and rarely explained.
Anything major. Large works usually carry their own consultation process, and a large figure that arrived without one is worth asking about.
Sundries, administration, other. Not categories — the place costs go when nobody has decided what they are.
Your apportionment. Your share is fixed by your lease. If the building's total rose and your share rose by more, two separate things happened and only one was mentioned.
One thing worth knowing before you ask
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.
What this means if you stop paying
Do not stop paying while you query a charge.
Questioning whether a charge is fair and withholding payment are two different things. Under a lease, arrears can put your home at risk, and the sums involved do not have to be large. Keep paying, and put your questions in writing.
Where Synclair comes in
Synclair reads the demand, the budget and the accounts together and sets the years side by side: what each line covers, what changed between them, and how your charges sit against published figures rather than against a feeling. Anything you report about the building stays on record with a date.
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.
Check your own statement →