Leasehold

A leaseholder is someone who:

• has bought a flat or maisonette from the Council under the Right to Buy Scheme.
• has bought an ex-Council flat or maisonette on the open market.
• has bought a long lease (normally for 125 years) and the right to live in the property for the length of the term of the lease.
• does not own the bricks and mortar or the land on which the flat is situated. This is owned by the freeholder, which is South Tyneside Council.
• has a written agreement with the Council, the lease, which contains the leaseholder's and Council's rights and responsibilities in relation to the property and the block in which the property is situated.

The lease also sets out the charges which the leaseholder must pay on an annual basis.

Charges

The most common charges you will incur as a leaseholder are:

• Ground rent
  A fixed annual payment of £10, which you pay to the Council as a rent for the land on which your property is situated.
• Buildings insurance
  South Tyneside Council provides buildings insurance as part of your lease and the cost of the premium is charged to you on an annual basis.
• Management charge
  The cost of the Council employing staff to deal with the lease; the cost of universal tasks such as invoicing.

Get involved

Involving you as a leaseholder is important to delivering effective, good quality housing services.

We want to make sure that the decisions we make reflect your priorities and that you have the opportunity to be involved either on your own or as part of a group.

For more information see getting involved. 

As a long leaseholder you have the right to live in your home for a fixed number of years.

South Tyneside Council still enforces the tenant's responsibilities in the lease.

They also still have ownership and responsibility for the building and all common areas.

Your lease

Your lease is a legally binding agreement between the Council and you.

It sets out all the rights and obligations of both parties relating to your property and the block and estate in which it is located. 

Each lease may be different and it is important to always check your own document for exact details.

Many leaseholders do not have a copy of their lease. We would advise you to get hold of your own copy so that you know your rights and obligations.

Although individual leases can differ in some respects, the general principles are common to all leases.

We provide some explanations for the main sections below.

When the Council signs the lease it agrees to:

• Allow you to live in your home, as long as you pay the ground rent and other charges and meet all your obligations.
• Keep your home insured for the full reinstatement value (not contents), give you a schedule of cover and a summary of the policy, and allow you to see the full policy if you ask.
• Keep the structure and outside of the building in good repair, and keep all shared parts of the building and estate where you live in good repair.
• Restore the building if it is damaged by any insured risk.
• Allow you to use the facilities that you share with other residents in your building or on your estate.
• Keep proper accounts in relation to service charges. The Council should make these accounts and supporting documents available for your inspection if you ask and give you information on how service charges are calculated.

Your rights as a leaseholder

These are some of your rights under thelaw.

You will have other rights under the terms of your lease.

Please refer to your own lease to check these rights. 

• Freedom from interference
  You have the right to 'quiet enjoyment'. This has nothing to do with 'noise' but means that you can live in your home without the Council interfering, as long as you keep to your obligations under the lease. The Council can go to court if you do not keep to the conditions of your lease
• The right to enfranchise
  "Enfranchisement" means that leaseholders can group together and buy the freehold of their block of flats if they and the building qualify. If you meet the requirements of the law, you can do this even if the freeholder does not want to sell it. The new owners of the freehold take on all the landlord's responsibilities for managing and maintaining the building, serving legal notices, collecting service charges, accounting for payments and enforcing the terms of the leases.
• Staying in your home
  You are secure in your home as long as you keep to the terms of the lease. Only a court can allow your home to be taken from you. This could happen if, for example, you failed to pay your service charge or mortgage, or you knowingly made false statements when you applied for the lease.

Get a copy of your lease

If you need a copy of your lease please take the following steps:

1. Contact the Solicitor who acted for you during the purchase of the property, as they may have a copy. If you have a mortgage, the original lease document should be with your lender. Your Solicitor should be able to confirm if the document was sent to your lender.
2. If your Solicitor or lender do not have a copy or you have no mortgage, contact The Land Registry at Durham who should be able to supply a copy for £12, if the document is held electronically, or £24 if not. Telephone: 0191 301 3500 or visit GOV.UK: Land Registry.
3. If you have been unable to get a copy from either of these sources, contact the Conveyancing Team at South Tyneside Council who can supply a copy of the counterpart lease for a charge of £30.

You can become a leaseholder by buying the lease of a Council flat.

If you are already a leaseholder you are free to sell your flat without the Council's permission.

Buying

There are two ways you can buy the lease of a Council flat:

• buying the lease from the Council, under the Right to Buy Scheme (subject to certain criteria)
• buying the lease on the open market, from the current leaseholder

If you buy the lease from the previous leaseholder (an assignment), you or your solicitor must tell the Council within one calendar month.

The Council charge a legal fee to register the new owners' details.

Selling

You do not need the Council's permission to sell your flat.

However, new purchases must be registered within one calendar month.

Your solicitor should be aware of this and should send the necessary documents on your behalf.

Leasehold Pack (Enquiries) 

When you put your flat up for sale, your Solicitor might require a 'Leasehold Pack' or a 'Sellers Pack'.

The Council will provide a standard leasehold / sellers pack which includes details of:

• the service charges and any arrears
• planned works and painting
• buildings insurance

Copy invoices can be provided for an additional fee or if you have kept previous invoices you can pass these onto your solicitor.

The Council charges a fee to provide the pack.

Please contact the Leasehold Team for details.

Repayment of discount 

If you have bought your home under the Right to Buy Scheme you can sell it whenever you like.

If you want to sell your home within the 'discount repayment period' you will usually have to repay some or all of the discount.

The amount you repay will depend on when you made your application to buy.

If you applied for the right to buy after 18 January 2005 and you wish to sell the property within the first five years, you will have some discount to repay:

• First year: the whole discount must be repaid
• Second year: four-fifths must be repaid
• Third year: three-fifths must be repaid
• Fourth year: two-fifths must be repaid
• Fifth year: one-fifth must be repaid
• After 5 years: no discount needs to be repaid

If you sell within 5 years the discount you repay will be a percentage of the resale value of the property.

This amount won't include the value of any improvements.

For example, if your home was valued at £100,000 when you bought it, and you received a discount of £20,000, that means that your discount was 20%.

If your home is valued at £150,000 when you wish to sell it, and you want to sell within the second year of purchase, you will have to repay £150,000 x 20% discount x 4/5 i.e. £24,000.

Right of First Refusal 

If you applied for the Right to Buy after 18 January 2005 and subsequently bought your flat, then prior to putting it up for sale for the first time (within first 10 years only) you will need to write to Legal Services, Town Hall and Civic Offices, South Shields, Tyne and Wear NE33 2RL and offer it back under the Right of First Refusal regulations.

The regulations lay out what you must state in your offer. These are:

1. The type of property (semi-detached, terraced (mid or end) flat or maisonette)
2. The number of bedrooms
3. The type of central heating
4. Any improvements you have carried out to the property since your purchase

Once your offer is received, Legal Services will acknowledge receipt and explain the Right of First Refusal procedure. 

The Council has 8 weeks from the receipt of your offer in which to decide whether it wishes to accept or reject your offer.

The Council will also offer your property to Registered Social Landlords, who will also have to decide within that 8 week period if they wish to accept or reject your offer. 

If the offer is rejected, you will have 12 months from the date of rejection to sell your property. 

If you fail to sell your property within the 12 months, then you will have to re-offer the property to the Council and go through the procedure again.

If the Council rejects your offer and you find a buyer, you may have discount to repay if you are selling within the first five years of buying it.

Please refer to the above section - repayment of discount.

Service charges

You are responsible for paying your service charges for the whole of the financial year in advance.

If you sell your home during the financial year, you have to pay the service charges from the 1 April to the day the sale completes.

The person buying the property will then be responsible for the service charges from the day after the sale completes until 31 March.

Your solicitor should work out what each party will need to pay, called apportionments.

The outstanding amount should be paid on completion to the Council by one of the solicitors.

Passing on the lease if you die

When you die, the right to your lease will normally pass to your nearest family member unless you have said otherwise in your will.

If you die without leaving a will that gives clear instructions about who the property should go to, the courts will deal with your estate.

The discount repayment clause does not apply in these circumstances. 

Once the property is transferred to a family member, if they choose to sell and the property is within the 'discount repayment period' or within the first ten years, then they will have to repay discount and / or offer the property back to the Council under the Right of First Refusal regulations.

Staying in your home

You are secure in your home as long as you keep to the terms of the lease.

Only a court can allow your home to be taken from you.

This could happen if, for example, you failed to pay your service charge, or mortgage, or you knowingly made false statements when you applied for the lease.

More information

If you bought your flat under the Right to Buy Scheme and need more information, see after buying my Council home. 

A service charge is a payment you have to make towards the landlord's costs of providing services, repairs, maintenance, improvements, insurance and management in relation to the building where your flat is.

Service charges may be actual or estimated costs.

We split service charges fairly between all the flats in the building.

The cost of the services to tenants is not subsidised in any way by leaseholders. We pay the percentage relating to properties that we do not let on long leases.

Tenants contribute to some of the charges through the rent they pay.

The Council is responsible for maintaining the structure and exterior of the whole building and the communal areas such as halls and stairways.

The costs of this work are passed back to you on a proportional basis through the service charge.

Ground rent is the charge you pay once a year to reflect the fact that the building containing your home is owned by the Council.

The charge is an annual payment as detailed in your lease.

What the service charges include

The service charges include:

• Day to day repair / maintenance - routine repairs.
• Caretaking services, including inspecting the estate and building where you live, reporting faults, cleaning areas as shown on your local schedule, picking up litter, moving rubbish bins and carrying out bulk refuse collections.
• Maintenance of fire alarms / extinguishers in communal areas.
• Maintenance of door entry systems.
• Lifts maintenance and repair.
• Major work service charges - these are for large work projects, such as renewing windows or roofs, redecorating the outside of the building, and inside and shared parts. The services you receive will depend on where you live.
• Shared TV aerial - keeping a shared television aerial in working order. You have to pay even if you choose not to use it.
• Door-entry system - maintaining remote controlled door-entry systems if these services are in place, including regular visits under a planned maintenance contract.
• Management fee - this is the cost of calculating and issuing invoices and other financial information, together with the cost of running the services detailed above.

Paying your leasehold charges

We offer a number of different ways to pay to make paying your service charge as easy as possible:

Online

Pay leasehold charges online

Direct Debit

If you have a bank account this is the easiest way to pay your bill.

Payments can be debited monthly (except 29th, 30th and 31st) or weekly on a Friday from your account and can now be set up over the telephone.

Contact the Leasehold Team on 0191 424 7745.   

Standing order

Simple to set up. A regular payment can be sent by your bank to your service charge account. 

Contact us for a form.  

Town Hall

You can pay your service charge in cash or by debit card at the self-service kiosks at Jarrow Town Hall and South Shields Town Hall.

Swipe card (PayPoint)

You can use your swipe-card to pay your rent at selected retail outlets.

Currently you can pay at any location that displays the PayPoint logo.

Find Local PayPoints. 

If you have misplaced your swipe card please contact the Leasehold (Income) Team on 0191424 7745.

Debit card (by telephone)

Contact the Leasehold Team on 0191 424 7745 during office hours; or call the Housing Services Centre on 0300 123 6633 between 8am and 6.30pm, Monday to Friday. 

Please quote your 7 digit payment reference number.

Internet bank transfer 

Transfer payments direct from your bank account to the Council's Lloyds Bank account.

• Sort Code: 30-97-89
• Account number: 35508568

Please quote your 7 digit payment reference number which can be found on your ground rent or management charges invoice.   

The buildings insurance in respect of leasehold flats is provided by Protector Insurance as of 1 April 2023. The policy is in place until March 2026.

A separate policy is in place for Terrorism cover, which is provided by Lloyds C/O Bowring Marsh.

What the policy covers

The buildings insurance policy covers the parts of the building which are the Council's responsibility to maintain.

These include the:

• structure
• outside of the building
• communal areas
• services and installations of the block

The buildings insurance policy covers damage caused by:

• fire, smoke, lightning, explosion or earthquake
• storm or flood
• escape of water from any fixed tank, appliance, heating system or sanitary ware
• riot, civil commotion, strike
• malicious damage
• theft or attempted theft
• subsidence, heave or landslip 
• falling trees or branches
• falling aerials or satellite receiving equipment, their fittings or masts
• impact by flying objects, vehicles, trains animals or aircraft or anything dropped from them
• accidental Damage to drains, pipes, cables and underground tanks
• accidental breakage of fixed glass, fixed sanitary ware, fixed water or heating systems
• accidental Damage and Damage to the property caused by forced entry of Emergency Services

If your mortgage company needs a copy of the buildings insurance policy, we can give you a document summarising the cover. 

Excess 

There is an excess of £100 on all claims except those on accidental damage (£50) or subsidence (£1,000).

This means that you will have to pay the first £100 on any claim you make other than accidental damage or subsidence.

What is not covered - exclusions

Before you make a claim you should refer to the policy booklet to make sure that there is cover in place.

The most common exclusions are:

• no cover if the property has been unoccupied for more than 30 consecutive days
• no cover for damage caused by wear and tear
• no cover for theft or attempted theft if your property is sub-let

Make a claim

Claims are to be notified as soon as possible, with full details to be provided within 30 days of the claim (7 days in respect of riot or malicious damage) including supporting evidence in writing.

The Police must be notified as soon as possible in the event of theft or malicious damage.

1. Phone: during office hours 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday telephoned through to your dedicated claim line: 0161 823 1912.
2. Email via protectorclaims@uk.sedgwick.com

For calls made out of office hours, please dial the above number and your call will be redirected to the out of hours office.

Your insurance policy number is 3146466.

Contents insurance

Contents insurance provides cover for all of the moveable items in your home.

Your contents insurance would cover items such as:

• furniture
• clothing
• carpets
• electrical items

This type of insurance is completely separate from buildings insurance.

You do not have to have contents insurance, although we strongly advise you to do so.

Contents insurance would also provide cover for tenant liabilities such as flood water from your home damaging another home.

We have negotiated an offer for affordable contents insurance cover for tenants and leaseholders.

As a leaseholder, you are responsible for repairs to your home.

Under the terms of your lease, the Council is responsible for maintaining:

• the structure and outside of the building
• shared areas
• services on the estate where your leasehold property is

We will carry out this work but as a leaseholder, you will have to contribute towards the cost of these repairs.

When you signed the lease, you agreed to meet the cost of any repairs and maintenance to your block and / or estate, including major work.

Often we carry out small-scale repairs to your block and estate, such as replacing a roof tile.

This maintenance work is carried out without letting the tenants and leaseholders in the block or on the estate know.

You will be charged for this day-to-day maintenance through your service charges.

Major work

We treat larger repairs and improvements, such as a new roof or windows, differently.

These are known as major work.

Summary of major work process:

• The work is identified
• We carry out an informal consultation
• We hold a formal consultation for leaseholders
• Work begins on site
• The work is completed
• We inspect the work
• There is a liability period for any possible faults which may arise
• We make the final payment to the contractor
• We work out your contribution
• We send you an invoice

Gas servicing

If you are a leaseholder, you can now have your gas appliances serviced every year by our Gas Servicing Team.

The charge for the service of the main appliance is just £52.80 (includes VAT). 

Additional appliances can be serviced for £21.60 (includes VAT) each.

Contact our Leasehold Team on 0300 123 6633 to arrange an appointment.

We are committed to providing you with excellent services that are relevant and meet your needs.

Our service standards let you know the level of service you can expect from us.

We have set our standards with you and you have said these are the things that matter most.

You have been involved in agreeing our standards and you will be helping us to monitor them, to make sure we keep our promise to you.

We aim to provide the best service we can and in doing so we will:

• Be polite and listen to what you have to tell us
• Treat you fairly and as an individual
• Respect your confidentiality
• Provide information that is clear, accurate and appropriate

We have a range of standards covering the different services that we provide.

For more information on our other standards, please contact any of our offices listed at the end of this leaflet.

We will publish the results of your agreed top ten service standards every quarter in our newsletter 'Housing Matters', on our website and in our housing offices.

We welcome your views and we would like you to tell us when we get things wrong or right. We will use the feedback you give us to improve the services we deliver.

Leasehold

We will:

• Provide you with a 'welcome pack' when you become a leaseholder
• Issue you with a service charge invoice and repairs statements by May each year

Mutual service charges within six months of the end of each financial year

• Make sure that the structure, shared areas and external areas of your building are insured against fire, flood, lightning, explosion and any other reasonable risk
• Provide you with a wide range of 'Payment Options' to pay your service charge accounts, including monthly instalments by direct debit

Find out more about leasehold. 

You do not need the Council's permission to sub-let your leasehold property.

If you do let sub-let your home, or have bought the property as an investment, you must tell the Council within one calendar month (notice of underletting) and pay a fee to register the underletting.

The Council needs details of:

• the tenancy start date and how long the property will be sublet for
• who is sub-letting the property
• where any correspondence regarding the lease should be sent

If you sub-let your property there are certain clauses of the buildings insurance, which you will no longer be covered by.

You remain responsible for the property and the behaviour of your tenant until you assign the lease.

Notice of underletting

If you want to sub-let your property, please contact the Leasehold Team for further details, or complete the form below.

Notice of underletting form

Being a landlord

If you sub-let your leasehold property this means you are a landlord to your tenant, with legal obligations such as provision of a gas safety certificate.

Your tenant also has legal rights.

If you are thinking of renting your property out you must make sure you know your rights and obligations and those of your tenant.

The following websites offer information on being a landlord.

• Gov.UK: Being a landlord and renting out a room
• Shelter: Landlord responsibilities