Lease extension and freehold purchase solicitors in Greenwich
Greenwich has more large master-planned estates than almost any borough — Royal Arsenal, Kidbrooke Village, Greenwich Millennium Village — where the entity you deal with is an estate management company rather than a traditional freeholder, and where you pay two charges rather than one.
Acting for leaseholders across Greenwich
We act for leaseholders across the Royal Borough of Greenwich — Woolwich and the Royal Arsenal, Greenwich, Blackheath, Kidbrooke, Eltham, Charlton and Plumstead — on lease extensions and freehold purchases.
The borough’s newer stock sits almost entirely within master-planned developments, and the leasehold questions there are modern ones: layered service charges, estate charges, management companies, and building safety obligations on the taller blocks.
Greenwich and Blackheath are a different world — Georgian and Victorian conversions and period mansion blocks, where the question is usually lease length and whether the leaseholders should buy the freehold together.
Estate management companies, and what you are actually paying for
On a master-planned estate the structure is layered and deliberately so, and it is worth understanding what sits where before challenging anything.
Your block service charge covers your building — its structure, common parts, lifts, insurance and management. It is a residential service charge and attracts the full statutory protections: it must be reasonably incurred, major works require consultation, and the eighteen-month rule applies.
Your estate charge covers the shared roads, landscaping, lighting, drainage and amenities across the wider development. Depending on how the estate is structured and whether the elements are held freehold, that charge may not attract the same protections. The reasonableness controls that apply to a service charge in a residential lease do not necessarily apply in the same way to an estate rentcharge on freehold land.
Which matters when you want to challenge something. The forum and the statutory basis differ, and it is worth establishing which of your charges is which before applying to the Tribunal. It also matters on a claim: the estate management company may or may not be a party to your lease, and if it is, it has to be dealt with.
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 Greenwich
The Royal Borough of Greenwich is freeholder of a substantial Right to Buy stock across Eltham, Plumstead, Charlton and Woolwich.
Housing associations with significant holdings include Peabody, L&Q, Hyde Housing and Clarion Housing Group.
Developer-linked estate management companies operate at Royal Arsenal, Kidbrooke and Greenwich Millennium Village, and investor freeholders hold ground rent portfolios across the older Greenwich and Blackheath 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 Greenwich 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
What is an estate management company and how does it differ from my landlord?
Your landlord owns the reversion to your lease. An estate management company maintains the shared parts of a wider development — roads, landscaping, lighting — and charges for it. They may be the same entity or entirely different, and on a statutory claim it is the landlord who must be served.
Why do I pay both a service charge and an estate charge at Royal Arsenal?
Because they cover different things: your building, and the wider estate. They usually have separate year-ends and separate administration, and importantly the statutory protections that apply to a residential service charge do not always apply in the same way to an estate charge.
Can I challenge an estate charge at the Tribunal?
It depends on how it is structured. A service charge under a residential lease can be challenged for reasonableness at the First-tier Tribunal. An estate rentcharge on freehold land may be a different matter, with a different forum. Establishing which you have is the first step.
Should we buy the freehold of our Blackheath conversion?
Frequently yes, where enough leaseholders are interested. It gives control, ends the ground rent and allows 999-year leases at a peppercorn. In a building of exactly two flats, both must participate — which in Blackheath’s converted houses is often the deciding question.
Tell us about your Greenwich 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.