Leasehold Valuation Tribunal

Quite often disputes and disagreements between these different types of tenure: leaseholders and freeholders occur. This type of cases can be takes to a LTV or better known as Leasehold Valuation Tribunal.

Typical examples of situations raised are related to service charges, insuring the property, services provided in the building, extending the lease, if you were to buy the freehold how much you will pay.

Regarding charges, the tribunal can decide if the amount you have to pay for repairing the property and force the owner of the freehold to refund you any payment and was judged as overcharged. These problems can easily escalate to a court, if you see yourself in this kind of situation you can refer to a directory of services where you can obtain legal advice.

One of the powers of the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal is to change an unclear lease in relation to insurance, building repairs and service charges.

Applying to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal

An application form can be downloaded from the Leasehold Advisory Service or directly in your local tribunal.

Leasehold Valuation Tribunal Decisions

Freeholder usually abides to the decision proclaimed by the tribunal. If this doesn’t happen you can still apply to a court to enforce the decision. In this scenario a solicitor may be needed to formalise the appeal.

The Procedure

After submitting the application and coming to the actual hearing, you will need as much documents as evidence and the tribunal will decide based on this and the information provided by the freeholder. The tribunal will make questions and both parts will have the chance of being heard along any witnesses. A written decision takes several weeks to arrive on the post meaning that anything will be decided on the day of the hearing. The whole procedure can take twelve months because some of these institutions have a backlog of processes in waiting.

The Lands Court

In Scotland The Land Court deals with cases involving agriculture and is mainly concerned in matters involving landlords and tenants. Most disputes about rights to land (for example, disputes over ownership or succession) are dealt with by the ordinary courts: the Sheriff Court or the Court of Session.