What usually happens
The consultation is done properly. The notice of intention went out, the observations were considered, the estimates were served with reasons, a leaseholder nominated a contractor and that contractor was asked for a price. Everyone involved has a file. Then the works are let, the file is closed, and the scaffold goes up on a Monday.
From the Tuesday onwards the arrangement for keeping residents informed is whatever the site manager and the block manager have time for. A leaseholder on the third floor telephones the managing agent's office on the Wednesday because the grinding started before eight and has not stopped. The person who answers takes a message and cannot say when the noise will stop, because the programme is on the contractor's laptop two miles away. The leaseholder telephones again on the Thursday and speaks to somebody else, who takes the same message. We have seen the office side of it as the contractor. The agent's phone never stops, everyone wants theirs sorted first, the contact details on file belong to somebody who never answers, and an engineer gets sent to a flat where nobody is in. The office is not slow. It has no way of showing that it is not.
Three weeks later the leaseholder writes to say they have been asking about the noise for three weeks with no reply, and that they want a reduction in the service charge for the disruption. The agent searches the shared inbox, finds one email from a fortnight ago that somebody read and did not answer, and cannot say what the site manager did about the noise, because the site manager was told by telephone. The consultation file, which is thorough, is no help at all, because none of this is what it was for.
Nobody has behaved badly. The contractor gave notice on a sheet of paper in the lobby that came down when the lift was serviced. The agent logged the calls in a system residents cannot see. The leaseholder raised the problem three times by three routes, none of which left a trail that the other two could check. What is missing is not diligence but a place to put it.
What Section 20 requires, in outline
The duty comes from section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and the procedure from the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003. Consultation is required where qualifying works would cost any one leaseholder more than the amount the regulations set, which is £250. If the landlord does not consult, the amount it can recover from each leaseholder for those works is limited to that figure, unless the First-tier Tribunal dispenses with the requirements under section 20ZA.
In the common case, where there is no qualifying long-term agreement and no public notice requirement, the procedure has two stages set out in Schedule 4 to the regulations. The landlord serves a notice of intention describing the works it proposes, or a place and hours at which a description can be inspected, states why the works are needed, and invites written observations within a consultation period of at least thirty days. A leaseholder, or a recognised tenants' association, may also nominate someone from whom the landlord should try to obtain an estimate. The landlord must have regard to the observations it receives.
At the second stage the landlord serves a notice with at least two estimates, one of them from a person wholly unconnected with the landlord, together with a summary of the observations made and the landlord's response to them. A further period of at least thirty days for observations follows. When the landlord awards the contract, it has to give reasons for its choice, or state where those reasons can be inspected, unless it picked the lowest estimate or a nominated contractor.
Where the process stops
Read the regulations through and the thing that stands out is where they end. Every duty in them is discharged before a single item of plant arrives. The consultation is about whether the works should be done, what they will cost and who will do them, and once the contract is let the statutory conversation with leaseholders is over.
Everything a resident cares about happens after that point. Which weeks the noise is in. Whether the scaffold on their window comes with a night sheet. When the water is off. Whether the dust that came through the vent on Tuesday is going to happen again on Thursday. What was done about the report they made on the Wednesday of week three, and how long it took. None of that is in the regulations, and none of it is in the consultation file.
This is why the same set of facts produces two irreconcilable accounts at the end of a job. The leaseholder's version is a list of things that went unanswered. The agent's version is that everything reported was dealt with. Both are describing a period neither of them recorded, and the tribunal or the ombudsman who is eventually asked to choose between them is being handed two memories. Our page on major works on a block follows the same scene through each person in it.
What the record does for both sides
A dated log of the works period helps the resident and the agent for the same reason, which is that it is not either party's account of events. For a resident, every issue they raise carries the time it was raised, the time it was acknowledged and the time it was marked resolved, and a service charge negotiation or a tribunal application starts from that rather than from a recollection of three weeks of silence. Our page for residents in a managed block covers what to do with it.
For the agent, the same timestamps are a defence rather than a threat. An agent whose complaints procedure promises a response within three working days, and who meets it, can show a report raised on the Wednesday morning acknowledged on the Wednesday afternoon and resolved on the Thursday with a photograph of the acoustic screen that went up. An agent who does not meet it will be caught by exactly the same log, and that is the honest position: the record cuts both ways, and it favours whoever actually did the work. Our page for managing agents sets that out in more detail, and the agent's other gain is that the daily calls go to the site team, who can act on them, instead of to an office that can only pass them on.
One record, and what it costs
The leaseholder who thinks they were ignored, the agent who cannot prove otherwise, the contractor who did put a notice in the lobby and the residents' management company that has to answer for all of it are arguing about a period none of them wrote down. A shared, dated record of the notices, the reports and the replies settles it for all of them at once, because it is the same record for each one. On Noisy Neighbour it costs £5 per site per week whatever the size of the block, and residents join free.
How Noisy Neighbour works during the works
Whoever sets the page up, whether that is the managing agent, the residents' management company or the contractor, prints the QR sheet and puts it in the lobby, by the lifts and on the hoarding. Scanning it opens the block's public page, which shows the company doing the work, the working hours and the notices for the weeks ahead. Residents install nothing and need no login, and those who want the notices by email join with an email address. There is no limit on the number who join and no charge to them.
Notices are posted once by the site team, emailed to every resident who has joined and shown on a calendar anyone with the link can see. The types are the ones a major works programme actually consists of: noisy work, deliveries, skips and waste collections, milestones such as the scaffold going up or coming down, and utility interruptions. A notice about Thursday's water shut-off does not come down when the lift is serviced.
A resident reports a problem by choosing a category, describing it and adding a photograph if it helps. The site team is notified straight away and replies in the same thread. Every issue records who raised it, when it was raised, when it was acknowledged, when it was resolved and whether the resident confirmed the fix, and the page shows the average response time and the average resolution time across the programme. Whoever set the page up sees all of it, and the history is kept for the life of the site, so the record at the end of the job is the whole job.