Leaseholders, freeholders and shared owners

What you can expect from us

Get involved – Homeownership Services Charter

We are working with a resident liaison group of leaseholders and other homeowners to agree a Homeownership Services Charter to improve services for homeowners.

Your lease (or transfer of part agreement)

Visit your lease (or transfer of part agreement) for information on your lease.

Visit extending your lease to find out about extending your lease.

Shared owners information

Visit shared owners for information.

Rechargeable services

We offer a range of paid for services in addition to the services we provide under the terms of your lease, we offer a range of paid for services.

Ground rent

If you are a leaseholder, you will have to pay ground rent. This charge is a small rent fee which is payable each year for the use of the ground on which the building stands.

Service charges

You will be charged for the works, utilities and services we provide to your block and/or estate. Service charges are calculated from 1 April to 31 March each year and are broken down into a number of categories.

Pay your service charge.

Major works

From time to time it will be necessary for us to undertake major works to improve or repair the communal and structural parts of your building. These will usually be planned one off works.

Pay for major works

Insuring your home

We are responsible for arranging your buildings insurance which covers the structure and communal parts of the building. You pay for the cost of buildings insurance in your service charges. Contents insurance is not included in this policy.

Making alterations to your property

See Altering or selling your home –  Making changes to your home.

Selling your home

See Altering or selling your home – Selling your home.

Property legal fees

See our property legal fees – from April 2023 (google sheet).

Sub-letting your leasehold property

If you sublet your property, your lease and the Leaseholders’ Rules and Regulations require you to tell us within four weeks of the date you started to sublet.

Homeowners gas safety

Hackney Council homeowners have an obligation under the Rules and Regulations to carry out an annual gas safety check and to provide us with a copy of the certificate.

Leaseholders who sub-let also have additional responsibilities to their tenants.

See homeowners gas safety.

We are offering a new service for Gas Safety Inspections to be provided by the Councils’ Gas Safety Engineers that currently carry out gas safety checks for our tenants.

See gas safety inspections for homeowners (PDF 302kb).

This service is currently available to leaseholders in blocks of 6+ storeys. After a 6 month trial period, we hope to extend to all Hackney homeowners.

Update your details

Update your details

How to request an external wall system (EWS1) form

We have no legal duty to provide the external wall system (EWS1) form, the duty on the Council currently is to provide a copy of the fire risk assessment for the property only.

However, as we want to support leaseholders where possible, we will provide an EWS1 form on request.

Tenant and leaseholder survey

Hackney Council housing services have a longstanding commitment to the consultation of its residents and to monitoring the quality of its services.

As part of this, from July 2021 to October 2021, Kwest Research carried out an independent and full-scale tenant and leaseholder survey on behalf of the Council’s housing services.

This project is the fourth of its kind, following on from a census in 2019, a sample survey in 2017 and a full census survey of all customers in 2016.

See tenant and leaseholder survey 2021 (PDF 7.7mb).

Homeownership news

Subscribe to our newsletter.

We also publish homeownership articles in the Council’s Love Hackney magazine.

Request an appointment with our Homeownership Services team

Visit Book an appointment with our Homeownership Services team.