PM (Property Managers) Forum
Service Charge Consultants: Defining Good Practice & Drafting a Charter
The following notes are a summary of the discussion that took place at the joint meeting of Remit Consulting’s Property Managers Forum, at the offices of MAPP, in June 2025.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This session, kindly hosted at MAPP London, took place on the 17th June 2025 and provided a platform for property managers to share experiences of working with service charge consultants. Facilitated by Remit Consulting, the audience identified key objectives, discussed recurring challenges, and began drafting a Charter to guide future engagement with Service Charge (SC) consultants. This session’s goals were to:
Share real-world experiences and frustrations.
Identify common pain-points and examples of poor practice.
Define what “good” looks like.
Agree on a consistent and professional approach to engagement.
Under the Chatham House rules, the audience identified key issues, which included misaligned incentives and opaque fee structures; excessive, repetitive, and poorly contextualised queries or adversarial tactics and administrative burden. In a similar manner, best practice traits of SC consultants were discussed, followed by a few proposed long-term solutions.
As a result, Charter principles were drafted for the next session, and the audience also defined the scope of this initiative.
KEY ISSUES EXPERIENCED WITH SC CONSULTANTS
The discussion highlighted typical behaviours and challenges within certain factions of SC consultancy, predominantly the ‘no-win, no-fee’ variety:
| Theme | Typical behaviours / problems |
|---|---|
| Misaligned incentives and opaque fees | Percentage-of-saving or no-win-no-fee models, limited fee disclosure. |
| Volume and quality of queries | Drip-feeding requests, repeated questions, excessive document demands, unlimited historic reviews. |
| Lack of context | Limited site knowledge, generic benchmarking, late involvement that blocks payments. |
| Adversarial tactics | Withholding approval to gain leverage, gatekeeping, hijacking tenant meetings. |
| Duplication and admin burden | Repeated requests for already-provided information, no mechanism to recover management time. |
| Undefined “reasonable” and “transparent” | Terms used without clear definitions in the RICS Code. |
| Statute of limitation ambiguity | Requests for reconciliations spanning many years, even across different agents. |
BEST PRACTICE TRAITS OF SC CONSULTANTS
The audience agreed on several characteristics that define a constructive and professional SC consultant:
Submits a single, consolidated query set with a full schedule of required documents.
Is transparent about methodology, assumptions, fee basis, and potential conflicts.
Uses existing records before requesting additional.
Clarifies contentious points early, ideally via a standardised query template.
Demonstrates site knowledge and engages with tenants constructively.
Clearly defines the scope of instruction and whom they represent.
TACKLING THE PROBLEM IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE
To improve current engagements, the following actions were proposed:
Share variance analysis to pre-empt generic challenges.
Request fee basis at the outset of engagement.
Clarify audit qualifications and relevant experience.
Agree consultant fees with tenants upfront.
Distinguish between certificated vs. audited accounts.
Avoid supplying contracts—show that a tender process was followed.
Require consultants to justify document requests.
Apply a reasonableness test—burden of proof lies with the consultant.
Copy tenants on all correspondence to maintain transparency.
Reference the Charter when formally engaging any SC consultant.
Prepare comprehensive budgets to reduce queries.
LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS
The group discussed broader industry changes to support better practice:
RICS to define levels of response and clarify “reasonable” and “transparent”.
Introduce accreditation for SC consultants which would include transparent fee structures, mandatory full query list at outset and standard response templates for agents.
SC Code to confirm that compliant tenders are not subject to further challenge.
Budget packs to highlight special factors in advance.
All responses to SC consultants to be copied to tenants to avoid misinformation and miscommunication.
DRAFTING PRINCIPLES FOR A CHARTER
The following principles were proposed for inclusion in the Charter:
1. Pre-engagement justification – scope, methodology, and fee structure to be shared upfront.
2. Detailed fee disclosure – full breakdown of rates, success fees, and triggers.
3. Single query set – all queries submitted once, in writing, with deadlines.
4. Information confirmation – consultants to check existing data before requesting more.
5. Professional qualifications – minimum standards (e.g. RICS, IRPM).
6. Occupier-first engagement – budgets shared with tenants before challenges.
7. Charging for unreasonable work – agents may recover costs for excessive queries.
8. Letter of instruction – consultants to provide tenant authorisation and agreement to pay undisputed sums.
9. Response timeframe – both parties to work to agreed SLAs.
10. Clear point of contact – named individuals on both sides.
MESSAGES TO TAKE TO RICS
The forum agreed on key messages to share with RICS during the Charter preparation:
Strengthen and disseminate guidance on SC consultant engagement.
Promote an industry-wide definition of “reasonable” and “transparent”.
Advocate for a formal accreditation scheme and standard response matrix.
NEXT STEPS
The next forum will take place in September, where the Charter will be finalised. In the meantime, the first version of the Charter will be circulated for commentary. If you have further comments or would like to contribute to the Charter’s finalisation, please reach out to Lorna Landells and Charlie Bolam.