The government has confirmed a standardised service charge demand form. It has also confirmed a prescribed annual report, plus hard deadlines for information requests. The government published its response to the Strengthening leaseholder protections consultation on 15 July 2026, setting out the shape of Part 4 of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. The measures are due to start in 2027.
What goes in the new service charge demand form?
More than most landlords send now, and in a format they will not pick.
The first demand each year must come with a budget for the block, building or development. That budget has to compare against the last accounting period, so a leaseholder can see what moved and by how much. Rules will prescribe any later demand in the year. They will prescribe the reconciliation demand that goes out with the final accounts.
The same package covers standardised service charge accounts. It covers buildings insurance disclosure too.
Together they replace a loose system. Beyond a landlord’s name and address and the summary of rights and obligations, the look of a demand was largely up to whoever sent it.
The annual report is the bigger change
The demand form tidies a document that already exists. The annual report creates one that does not.
Landlords will have to produce a report covering key contacts and important dates under the lease. It must cover the condition of the building. It must cover past and planned statutory surveys. And it must cover major works planned over the next two years, with a note on whether the reserve fund covers them. It goes to leaseholders and shared owners.
Read that list from a conveyancer’s desk rather than a managing agent’s. It looks a lot like a ready-made answer to several standard pre-contract enquiries. Better still, it will exist whether or not anyone asks for it. Expect buyers to ask sellers for a copy, and expect questions about landlords who have not produced one.
New deadlines for information requests
The right to ask for information gets wider and, more usefully, gets a clock.
Where a landlord needs information from a third party, the rules will set a maximum of 15 days to make that request. The right to inspect documents in person survives. Landlords must set up that inspection within three calendar months. Landlords have to keep leaseholders posted on progress.
Fifteen days is the number to note. It does not say when the third party must reply. It does put the landlord on a clock for the part it controls, which is where most requests currently stall.
When do the rules come into force?
Not yet, and not all at once. None of this is law today. The measures arrive through a series of statutory instruments, and the plan is to start them as soon as possible in 2027.
The notice periods are generous and uneven. Private landlords get 12 months’ notice. Social landlords get 24, on the basis that their systems changes are heavier.
One carve-out matters for anyone acting for registered providers. Their tenants will get the standardised demand form where they pay fixed and variable service charges. They will not get the annual report. The Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements land in October 2026, and the government does not want two overlapping regimes.
Every managing agent and landlord client will need new demand forms, a new annual report and a documented process for information requests before commencement in 2027. Conveyancers should expect the annual report to become a standard pre-contract enquiry document, and to be asked whether a seller’s landlord is compliant with it.
What should conveyancers do now?
Almost nothing is required today. That is exactly why the next 12 months are useful.
Three jobs are worth starting. Landlord and agent clients need to know a reporting duty is coming, and that building condition and survey records will have to be fit to send out rather than merely held. Enquiry packs need checking against the annual report, since asking for a prescribed document twice wastes everyone’s time. And tell leasehold buyers today that the disclosure they get will look different from the disclosure a buyer gets in 2028.
The full government response goes into detail on each measure. The original consultation shows the position all this is moving away from.
Summer has now brought a second big change to the conveyancing process, after the home buying reforms. It lands on a market still working through the Renters’ Rights Act.