UK Construction and Law

Cost of moving residents out while repairs are done is recoverable through the service charge

By Staff Writer  |  16 August 2026

The tribunal below held that leaseholders in a west London block could not be charged for rehousing the occupants of two basement flats during damp proofing. That has been reversed. Removal, storage and accommodation are ancillary to the repair.

Anyone who has priced a repair inside an occupied building has met this question. The works cannot sensibly be done around the residents, so somebody has to move them out and store their furniture. Is that part of the cost of the repair?

The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) answered on 10 August 2026 in Southern Land Securities Ltd v Rettie, and reversed the First-tier Tribunal on every limb.

The building is a large semi-detached Victorian villa on a corner in west London, converted into eight flats. Two sit at basement level, partly below ground, and both had damp penetration through the walls. The remedy was to hack the plaster off the affected walls back to the brick, inject a chemical damp proof course, apply a waterproof render internally and repair the exterior pointing, at a cost of about £85,000.

Two leaseholders applied under section 27A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to test their liability. Their shares of the estimated total were £11,771 and £13,054. Inside those figures sat temporary accommodation for the basement occupants, and the removal and storage of their belongings, put at £16,397.

The point both sides argued the wrong way round

The First-tier Tribunal held the leaseholders not liable for two reasons. A landlord is under no obligation to pay for a tenant's alternative accommodation where the tenant has to move out for the work to be done. And the payment obligation in the lease would not be read as reaching beyond the repair itself. It added that the costs had not been reasonably incurred anyway, because there was no evidence it had been strictly necessary for the occupants to vacate.

That runs the authority backwards, and the Deputy Chamber President said so. The controlling decision is McGreal v Wake, where the Court of Appeal held that a landlord who covenants to repair acquires a right as well as a duty, including an implied right to enter and occupy, but only so far as is strictly necessary.

The consequence is a fork. If it is necessary for the occupier to vacate, she must go, and at her own expense. If the work can be done around her, she is under no obligation at all.

If the landlord wants the tenant to move out, it will have to obtain her agreement, and the tenant may require that her expenses are paid as the price of her cooperation.

Martin Rodger KC, Deputy Chamber President of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber)

A finding that vacating was not strictly necessary is not a reason to disallow the cost. It is the reason the landlord had to pay it.

The original January 2022 specification had required the contractor to work around occupied flats. The scope grew when further damp was found, and the August 2022 revision asked contractors to tender on the basis that both flats would be emptied and the contents stored first. The landlord had a choice between a slower, dearer job around the residents and a faster one with them gone. It chose the second and paid their expenses. Expenditure may be reasonable even where it is not necessary.

Where the line falls on ancillary cost

The second holding travels furthest beyond leasehold work. A repairing obligation does not stop at the works themselves.

The parties to the lease would expect the landlord to incur all sorts of ancillary costs if it had to carry out significant repairs, such as the costs of professional supervision, or the cost of disposing of waste material, or obtaining a permit to erect scaffolding on the pavement or place a skip on the road.

Martin Rodger KC, Deputy Chamber President of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber)

Removing and storing the contents, and rehousing the occupants, fall into that same category, and are incurred in performing the repairing obligation just as much as the damp proof course. The discretionary limb of the payment clause would have carried them anyway.

One further argument went shortly. The tribunal below had thought the landlord could simply have declined to do the work, because a refusal of access is a defence to a disrepair claim. Whether it could have defended a damages claim was neither here nor there.

What it means when the works reach an occupied building

The appeal was allowed and the costs are recoverable. For anyone specifying repairs in an occupied block, the decant is a line in the job rather than an afterthought, and the question to settle before tender is not whether moving people out is convenient but whether it is essential. That answer decides who carries roughly a fifth of the cost, which is what accommodation and storage came to against an £85,000 repair.