Lease extension and freehold purchase solicitors in Southwark
Southwark Council is one of the largest residential freeholders in the country, and a substantial proportion of the borough’s leaseholders are Right to Buy owners. Its procedures, its standard lease form and its major works consultation shape most claims here.
Acting for leaseholders across Southwark
We act for leaseholders across the London Borough of Southwark — Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Peckham, Camberwell, Dulwich, Herne Hill, Elephant and Castle and Walworth — on lease extensions and collective freehold purchases.
The scale of the council’s leasehold portfolio here shapes everything. Claims run to settled procedures, the standard form of new lease is used across thousands of properties, and major works consultation is a live issue for a great many leaseholders at any given time.
Alongside that sits the Bermondsey warehouse conversion stock, the Dulwich period market, and the regeneration schemes at Elephant Park and along the riverside.
Major works, section 20, and what a lease extension does not fix
For a Southwark Right to Buy leaseholder the bill that arrives for major works is frequently a bigger number than the lease extension premium, and the two are often live at the same time.
A lease extension does not affect a service charge liability. The new lease is on the same terms as the old one save as the Act permits, so the service charge machinery carries across. Extending your lease will not reduce a major works bill, and it does not need to wait for one to be resolved either.
But the consultation rules are worth knowing. Where qualifying works will cost any leaseholder more than £250, the landlord must consult in the prescribed form and to the prescribed timetable. Where it does not, recovery is capped at £250 per leaseholder regardless of what the works cost. The Tribunal can dispense with the requirements, but dispensation is not automatic and turns on whether leaseholders have suffered prejudice.
And the eighteen-month rule. Costs incurred more than eighteen months before a demand are not recoverable unless leaseholders were notified in writing within that period that the costs had been incurred and would be charged. On long-running estate programmes that is a real point.
The practical advice is to deal with the two separately and on their own merits. Challenge the service charge on service charge grounds at the Tribunal; extend the lease on its own timetable, because delay there has its own price.
The part the valuer does not do
A lease extension has two halves. One is the premium — a valuation exercise, and the reason to instruct a specialist surveyor. The other is the document you are handed at the end, and it is where a leaseholder is most exposed and least likely to be looking.
On a statutory claim under the 1993 Act the new lease must be granted on the same terms as the existing lease, save for the additional 90 years, the peppercorn rent, and a narrow set of modifications the Act permits — broadly to reflect changes to the property since the original grant, to deal with an interest the landlord no longer holds, or to remedy a genuine defect.
That is a protection, and it is only worth what the solicitor reading the draft makes of it. Landlords’ solicitors will frequently send a draft that is not a copy of your lease at all, and unless somebody compares the two line by line, the changes complete with the extension and bind you for the next century and a half. We check the draft against your existing lease clause by clause, and we resist anything the legislation does not permit.
What we look for in a landlord’s draft
Changes that alter what you pay. Service charge apportionment quietly replaced with “a fair proportion as determined by the landlord”. Widened recovery provisions for management costs, professional fees and reserve funds. New administration charges. Insurance commission made recoverable. Repairing obligations shifted from landlord to leaseholder.
Changes that alter what you may do. A qualified alterations covenant turned absolute, removing the statutory protection that consent may not be unreasonably withheld. New restrictions on subletting or short-term letting. Rights newly reserved to the landlord to build on the roof or run services through your flat. Wider forfeiture provisions, or indemnity covenants the original lease never contained.
None of this is hypothetical, and very little of it is announced. It arrives as a clean engrossment described as being “in the same form as the existing lease”, and it is found only by comparison. Some modifications are legitimate — our job is to distinguish those from the ones that simply improve the landlord’s position, and to say so in writing before anything is agreed.
Landlords and housing associations in Southwark
The London Borough of Southwark is freeholder of a very large residential portfolio, with Right to Buy leaseholders across the Aylesbury, Peckham, Walworth and Bermondsey estates.
Housing associations with substantial holdings include Peabody, Clarion Housing Group, Notting Hill Genesis and Hyde Housing.
Developer-linked management companies operate at Elephant Park and along the riverside, and investor freeholders hold ground rent portfolios across the Dulwich, Bermondsey and Camberwell conversion stock.
Areas we cover
Who does what
The valuation
The premium is a question of valuation evidence rather than legal argument, and it needs a surveyor who acts on enfranchisement claims regularly. A specialist valuer appraises the flat, advises on the figure to propose and the range within which to settle, negotiates with the landlord’s surveyor and gives expert evidence at the Tribunal if it comes to that. We work closely with Blakes Chartered Surveyors, and you are free to instruct any valuer you wish.
The legal work
Establishing entitlement, identifying every landlord who must be served, drafting and serving a notice that will withstand scrutiny, running the statutory timetable — and negotiating the terms of the new lease itself. The two roles are not sequential: the figure in your section 42 notice is a joint decision, which is why we involve a valuer from the first conversation rather than after the notice has been drafted.
Or have both handled together
Packaged fixed fees combining the legal work, the valuation and the negotiation are available through extension.lease, run jointly by Arcadia Law and Blakes Chartered Surveyors — often the simplest and most cost-effective route for a single flat.
Estimate your premium
Our lease extension calculator gives an indicative premium range from three figures: the unexpired term, the ground rent payable and the value of your flat. It is a starting point for a conversation rather than a valuation, but it will tell you the order of magnitude before you commit to anything.
If your flat has fewer than 90 years remaining, or a ground rent that rises at intervals of less than twenty years, it is worth running the numbers now rather than at the point you decide to sell.
Fees
Fixed fees wherever possible, agreed before we start. The figures below are starting points for straightforward matters; we will give you a tailored quote once we have seen the lease.
Group and block discounts are available where several leaseholders in the same building instruct together, priced as one exercise rather than a claim per flat. Freehold purchases are priced per participating flat from £1,250 + VAT. On a statutory claim you are also responsible for the landlord’s reasonable legal and valuation costs, which can be challenged — the costs of the negotiation itself and of any Tribunal proceedings are not recoverable from you.
Our other work for Southwark clients
Lease extensions and freehold purchases are the bulk of what we do, but not all of it. Residential conveyancing — sale and purchase of houses and flats, freehold and leasehold — sits naturally alongside a lease extension where a sale is in prospect. Landlords and management companies — service charges, section 20 consultation, arrears, consents, company filings and the transactional work every sale generates. And the documents: deeds of variation, licences to alter, lease and title reviews, and independent legal advice for guarantors and directors.
Why instruct Arcadia Law
We read the lease you are being given, not just the one you have — every draft is compared clause by clause against the existing lease, and anything the legislation does not permit is resisted. Specialists, not generalists, and members of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners. We act across all thirty-two London boroughs and know how the local authority legal departments and the larger investor freeholders operate. We act for landlords as well as leaseholders, which is why we know where a landlord’s position will and will not hold — conflicts are checked before we take instructions. Tribunal and court where it is warranted, weighed against the costs, the risk and the time, which for many claims points the other way.
Common questions
Southwark Council is my freeholder — what is its lease extension procedure?
The same statutory framework applies as to any landlord. Councils deal with these claims constantly and work to settled procedures, so the timetable is usually predictable. The council issues its own standard form of new lease, which should be checked against your existing lease rather than accepted as issued.
I have received a section 20 notice for major works — what are my rights?
You are entitled to be consulted in the prescribed form and to make observations that must be genuinely considered. Where the landlord fails to consult properly, recovery is capped at £250 per leaseholder for qualifying works — though the Tribunal can dispense with the requirements where leaseholders have suffered no prejudice.
Will extending my lease reduce my major works bill?
No. The new lease is on the same terms as the old one save as the Act permits, so the service charge machinery carries across. The two are separate questions and should be dealt with separately — but neither needs to wait for the other.
Can we buy the freehold of a council block?
In principle, where the building and the group qualify. In practice the qualifying tests — self-contained premises, two-thirds qualifying leaseholders, participation by half the flats — are harder to satisfy on a mixed-tenure estate block than in a private building. It is worth establishing early rather than assuming either way.
Tell us about your Southwark flat
The address, the unexpired term and the ground rent if you know them, and who your freeholder is. If you have received an offer from your landlord, send that too. We will tell you where you stand, what a claim is likely to cost, whether the statutory or voluntary route suits you better — and, if an offer has been made, what is actually in it. The first conversation is at no cost.