Your Annual Property Management Review: A Practical Checklist
An annual review of a block is usually treated as a report on the year that has finished. It is more useful as preparation for the year about to start. By the time the accounts are signed, most of the decisions that shaped the year were made twelve months earlier.
This is the checklist we work through with freeholders and resident boards. It takes an afternoon and it is the single highest-return piece of work in the management year.
1. The building, against its own maintenance schedule
Not "is anything broken" but "where is each element in its life cycle". Roof coverings, external decoration, windows and doors, lift plant, entry systems, heating plant, drainage, external lighting and surfacing.
For each: when was it last done, what is the expected cycle, and what does that imply for the reserve fund. A maintenance schedule with dates turns a reserve contribution from a guess into a figure you can defend if it is challenged.
2. Compliance actions, not compliance documents
Take the fire risk assessment, the fixed wiring report, the emergency lighting log, the water hygiene assessment, the lift examination reports and the asbestos register. For each, list the recommendations and mark each one done or not done, with a date and an invoice reference.
The document that is current but whose actions are outstanding is worse than no document, because it is a written record that the risk was identified and left. Anything still open goes into next year's budget as a costed line, not as an aspiration.
3. Budget against actual, line by line
A total that lands close to budget can conceal two large variances cancelling each other out. Compare each line, then look specifically at reactive repairs, utilities, insurance and anything driven by a compliance action list.
Where a line was materially wrong, work out whether it was a one-off or a structural under-estimate. Repeating last year's figure for a line that overran by 40% is how a block ends up issuing a balancing charge every year and losing goodwill it does not need to lose.
4. Contracts and their renewal dates
List every contract with its term, notice period and renewal date. Then check two things.
First, whether any of them is a qualifying long-term agreement — a contract of more than twelve months under which a single leaseholder pays more than £100 in an accounting period. Those require statutory consultation under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 before they are entered into or renewed.
Second, whether any will auto-renew before you next look at them. A contract that renews itself in February is a decision you have already made without noticing.
Benchmark the main lines — cleaning, grounds, lift maintenance, insurance — at least every third year. Testing the market annually on everything is disruptive and rarely pays for itself; never testing it is worse.
5. Insurance, properly
Check the declared reinstatement value against a current valuation rather than an indexed figure that has drifted for a decade. Underinsurance triggers average, which reduces every claim proportionally, not just large ones.
Review the excesses, the claims history, and whether any material fact has changed — works carried out, a change of use, cladding or an unremediated defect. Leaseholders are entitled to see the policy and a summary of cover, so it should be capable of being produced without a fuss.
6. Arrears, by leaseholder
Review the position name by name, not as a headline figure. One long-standing debt hides the pattern in the rest.
Recovery gets harder with age. A service charge also cannot be treated as admitted for forfeiture purposes until it has been agreed, admitted or determined by a tribunal or court, so the sequence takes time and starting it late costs a year.
7. Section 20 planning for the year ahead
Identify any works where a single leaseholder's contribution will exceed £250. Those require full statutory consultation, which runs to a fixed timetable of notices and observation periods.
Consultation started during the annual review is consultation that finishes in time for the works. Consultation started when the scaffolding is booked is not, and proceeding without it caps recovery at £250 per leaseholder unless the tribunal grants dispensation under section 20ZA.
8. The accounts, and what leaseholders can ask for
Service charge accounts and company accounts are different documents. An RMC that has filed at Companies House has not thereby met its obligations to leaseholders.
Under section 21 of the 1985 Act a leaseholder may require a written summary of relevant costs, certified by a qualified accountant where the building contains more than four dwellings. Section 22 then gives a right to inspect the underlying receipts and invoices within six months of that summary. Section 20B makes costs incurred more than eighteen months before a demand irrecoverable unless written notice was given in time. And section 21B requires the prescribed summary of rights and obligations to accompany every demand.
Reviewing these once a year is what stops them becoming a dispute. We cover the detail in our guide to service charge transparency.
9. The company, if there is one
For an RMC or RTM company: confirm the confirmation statement and accounts filing dates, check the registered office and PSC entries, and reconcile the register of members against the flats that changed hands during the year.
Since 18 November 2025, directors must verify their identity with Companies House individually and supply a personal code with the next confirmation statement. Check which of your directors have done so. Confirm directors' and officers' cover is in place and names anyone newly appointed.
10. What residents were told, and when
Most disputes we inherit are not about the amount. They are about a demand that arrived without explanation. Review what was communicated during the year: the budget with its assumptions, notice of any significant works, an explanation of any material variance, and a route for raising a concern.
A budget circulated in draft with reasoning attached costs nothing and changes the tone of the whole year.
Turning the review into next year's budget
The output of this exercise is not a report. It is a list of costed lines for the coming year, a diary of consultation deadlines, and a reserve contribution derived from the maintenance schedule. Our guide to service charge budgets covers how those become a defensible set of demands.
How Temphis works
We take on ten to fifteen properties a year, which is what allows this to be done building by building rather than by template. What the service covers is under block management, our fees are published in full at standard fees, and transferring block manager explains the handover if you are considering a change. Leaseholders looking to take control themselves should read right to manage.
To arrange a review of your building, get in touch.