The Social Housing Action Campaign is highlighting the experiences of Plus Dane Housing residents who have received sharp service charge rises for the maintenance of a small strip of communal land. Despite requests and complaints to the landlord, they have received no evidence or invoices to back up the demands. Here one of the residents, Ella, explains the background to the campaign.
The paperwork that ties me to Plus Dane Housing was written in 1989. I was a barely sentient one year old. My name isn’t on it. Plus Dane’s name isn’t on it. Yet somehow, this paperwork legally binds me to pay them money every month for services that aren’t delivered.

I bought my home in Merseyside in 2018, and I couldn’t believe my luck. Safe, tranquil, and friendly, with boxy flat-roofed houses in block primary colours and decent-sized front gardens decorated lovingly by their owners, this former council estate has an enclave-like quality.

It’s not exactly out in the sticks, but the way it’s situated means you hear birdsong more than you hear cars. Pedestrianised and set back from the road, it was perfect for my cats, and the close-knit, family-oriented setting was ideal for my eventual child.

Like most of my neighbours, I’m a freeholder. I own my house and the land it stands on. Normally, that means no service charges: you pay your mortgage, your council tax, and look after your own property.

But buried in my conveyance paperwork was an old legal clause, written when Liverpool council first sold this estate. It says freeholders must chip in for communal upkeep such as grass cutting, trees, footpaths, and rubbish disposal. Over time, the council took over the footpaths and the non-household waste collection disappeared. All that’s really left from the original covenant is the gardening.

For years the charges were small. Mine was a token £6 a month. For a while, I paid it rather than raise a fuss, despite my question mark over just who Plus Dane was. Then, without consultation or explanation, it trebled.

The letters announcing these hikes were not well put together. Indeed, they were embarrassingly sloppy and misspelt. At the time, I was in and out of hospital, so I didn’t have much time to think about Plus Dane and these oddly printed letters, which were more like amateur phishing emails than an official communication from a serious company.

That changed when I received a letter threatening me with a County Court Judgement (CCJ) if I didn’t pay alleged arrears within 14 days. As shoddily printed this letter was, the threat was enough to make me start asking my neighbours about Plus Dane and their fees. That’s when I realised my £18 was nothing compared to their horror stories.

The Human Cost

This is a gorgeous neighbourhood, but its residents are not without their struggles. Many are retired, in ill-health or on low-income, and are thus vulnerable to Plus Dane’s intimidation. My neighbour Lola saw her charge jump from £11 to more than £90 in a single year. The charges hit just as she was forced to stop work due to a serious medical condition.

Another neighbour, Erin, who has lived here for more than 50 years, went from £5 to more than £60 a month. She has already paid Plus Dane over £1,000 for what could amount to no services at all.

A new neighbour, who like me had no idea about the covenant when she bought her home, was slapped with a £72 monthly charge within weeks. Another resident tried to dispute her increase from £6 to £16, but gave in, against her better instincts. She was too ill to keep fighting and too worried that if she died, her family would inherit the debt.

These aren’t isolated incidents. Across the estate, people have stories like this: sudden hikes, inconsistent charges and threats of legal action. We have all, individually, tried to talk to Plus Dane about these hikes, but we get dismissed, told it’s non-negotiable, and that it cannot possibly be a mistake.

To rub salt in our wounds, despite these massive increases, the estate is not looking better. If anything, areas around the houses are looking shabbier. And there is no evidence that the money is going where Plus Dane claims.

The Telltale Hike

When I asked Plus Dane for invoices to prove these charges were being spent on the estate, they refused. What they gave me instead was a budget. Not proof of money spent, just numbers on a spreadsheet. These included rises for grass cutting from £4,753.54 to £5,537.48, weed control from £4,423.00 to £5,152.42, and leaf collection from £3,791.14 to £4,416.36.

In total across all services, the costs went from around £14,000 per year to nearly £17,000 per year; well above rates of national inflation, and all to manage a few strips of grass and five trees.

And here’s the most suspicious part: the prices not only increase, they increase by exactly 16.49%. That isn’t how real-world costs behave. Some go up, some down. It isn’t how the law says service charge rises should behave. The law requires service charges to reflect actual cost increases. To see multiple categories rising by exactly the same percentage is evidence of a formula dragged down a column on a spreadsheet.

The Big Picture

This isn’t about penny-pinching. £18 a month doesn’t ruin me, though it is insulting to have it demanded for nothing. What matters is the neighbours who are vulnerable and are being threatened with court action for charges that have no basis in evidence.

This is about accountability. Housing associations like Plus Dane are meant to serve communities, not exploit them. Yet here, they use an obscure covenant from 1989 to squeeze money out of freeholders who already pay council tax, mortgages, and maintain their own homes.

The law is clear. Under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, Section 19, service charges are only recoverable to the extent that they are both reasonable and reasonably incurred, and must reflect the actual costs of the services delivered. Cases like ours are precisely what this law was designed for: to prevent and prohibit service charges used as a backdoor revenue stream. Plus Dane should not be allowed to simply pluck figures from thin air and demand we pay up.

The Fight Back

The service charge increases, the neglect of the estate, and the smearing of residents trying to gain some insight into where their money is going led us to form a residents’ association, organise a petition, take a complaint to our local MP, and seek support from SHAC.

We’re not refusing to pay for genuine services. We are refusing to be treated as a slush fund for a housing association that won’t open its books, and which so aggressively disdains our community.

A clause in our outdated leases may bind us to contribute to fair costs, and we accept this. But we have no obligation whatsoever to save Plus Dane’s disappointing profit margins. All we’re asking for is transparency, evidence, and fairness. It is long overdue.

The residents’ association has organised a joint meeting with SHAC to discuss resisting Plus Dane’s mismanagement and organising collective resident action to hold them to account. If you would like to know more, please contact shac.action@gmail.com.

All names in the article have been changed for fear of landlord reprisals. SHAC is a campaign group linking tenants, renters, shared owners, and leaseholders living in social and private housing. We campaign to improve the conditions of homes and neighbourhoods, and to reduce the commercialisation of housing. SHAC’s End Service Charge Abuse Campaign can be seen at https://shaction.org/service-charges/