The short answer: Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requires a landlord to consult leaseholders before major works once the cost passes a set contribution per leaseholder. Miss the process and recovery is capped at that contribution. It obliges notice and reasoning, not permission.
General information, not legal advice. Pluvian Roofing supplies the surveys, specifications and reports a consultation runs on. The process itself is led by a managing agent or a solicitor, and the statute and current regulations govern it.
What is the consultation actually for?
Making leaseholders informed participants in a bill they have to pay. They cannot choose the contractor and they cannot stop the work, but they are entitled to know what is proposed, why, at what cost, and to have their written observations considered before anything is committed.
Read that way the process stops being a hurdle and starts being a defence. A freeholder who has consulted properly can show, later and to anybody, that the work was specified, priced competitively and explained. A freeholder who has not is exposed on the one point that matters most, which is recovering the money.
When do roof works cross the threshold?
When any single leaseholder's contribution to the project would exceed the amount set in the regulations. The test is per leaseholder, not the total value of the job, which is why a modest programme across a small block can trigger consultation while a larger sum spread over many flats does not.
That amount is set by regulation and can be changed, so the current figure is the one to check with your agent or solicitor rather than one quoted on a website, this one included. What is worth understanding is the shape of it: divide the likely cost by the number of contributing leases, compare that share to the threshold, and you know which conversation you are in before a specification exists.
What are the stages, in plain English?
A notice, a pause for responses, estimates, another pause, then a decision that has to explain itself. The statutory periods run after each notice and are fixed by the regulations rather than chosen by the landlord, which is what makes the timetable predictable even when the project is not.
- Notice of intention. The landlord says what is proposed and why, and invites written observations. Leaseholders may also nominate a contractor to be asked for a price.
- The observation period. Responses come in and have to be considered, not merely received. This is the stage where a clear specification earns its keep, because most objections are really requests for information.
- Estimates obtained. Prices are sought against the specification, including from any contractor leaseholders properly nominated.
- Notice of estimates. The estimates are made available with a summary of observations already received and the landlord's response to them, and a further period for observations runs.
- Award and reasons. If the contractor chosen is neither the cheapest nor a leaseholder nomination, the landlord has to give written reasons for the choice.
Elapsed time is the thing agents most often underestimate. The statutory pauses alone occupy a couple of months, and around them sit surveying, specification writing, tendering and the wait for prices. A roof identified as failing in autumn is realistically a programme for the following year, which is an argument for starting the survey early rather than for starting the notices early.
Why do a specification and a survey make it survivable?
Because everything the process demands is a document, and both are documents. A consultation is only as strong as what it consulted on: vague scopes produce prices that cannot be compared, objections that cannot be answered and a choice that cannot be justified in writing.
A condition survey establishes what the roof is actually doing, with photographs behind it, so the case for spending is evidence rather than assertion. A written specification then fixes the build-up, the details and how far the work runs, so every price answers the same question. Together they turn the awkward stage, comparing estimates, into arithmetic.
What do leaseholders object to, and what answers it?
Almost always one of three things: that the work is unnecessary, that it is too expensive, or that a cheaper contractor was ignored. Each has an evidential answer, and each becomes unanswerable if the evidence was never gathered.
- "The roof does not need doing." Answered by a survey that shows the condition with dated photographs, and by the repair history that came before it.
- "This is too much money." Answered by prices against a single specification, and by being straight about what is known and what remains provisional until a covering is lifted.
- "My builder would do it cheaper." Answered by inviting that contractor to price the same specification. A cheaper number for different work is not a comparison, and the specification is what makes the difference visible.
None of that requires the objections to be unreasonable. Most of them are what anyone would ask about a bill they did not choose, and a process that has anticipated them is faster than one that argues.
Why is splitting a programme a false economy?
Because the saving is imaginary and the exposure is real. Breaking one roof project into pieces small enough to fall under the threshold is a well-known pattern, and it invites exactly the challenge it was meant to avoid, with the recovery cap waiting at the end of it.
It also produces a worse roof. Work split by budget rather than by building means new covering meeting old at arbitrary lines, guarantees that cover parts of a roof rather than a roof, and a second visit paying again for access and setting up. The honest version of the same instinct is a planned maintenance programme: small, genuinely separate works done on schedule, which postpones the major project instead of pretending it is several minor ones. Where a block does need the major project, the reporting agents can forward is what carries it through consultation intact.