The Property Institute (TPI) released its 2026 Service Charge Index on May 21st 2026, providing updated insight into rising service charge costs across residential developments.
The Property Institute (TPI) is the leading professional body for the property management sector, representing around 7,500 property managers and more than 380 managing agent firms collectively. TPI members manage over two million leasehold homes in England and Wales, freehold flats in Scotland, and institutional build-to-rent developments across the UK.
What is the Service Charge Index?
TPI’s service charge index is a benchmarking report that provides a data overview, of how residential service charge fees paid by leaseholders for the upkeep, maintenance, and safety of buildings, are evolving across England, Scotland, and Wales.
Each year, TPI gathers the service charge index using real financial and operational data submitted by managing agents and property management firms.
Jennings & Barrett are proud to have contributed to each report since the first publication of the Service Charge Index in 2024. As one of 13 members from the membership of ~360 organisations accredited by TPI, just 3.6% of eligible members joined the data collection.
Why Do We Contribute?
Jennings & Barrett contribute to the TPI’s service charge index to support wider industry analysis and help build a more accurate understanding of service charge trends across the residential property management sector.
Our contribution to the index helps support more accurate benchmarking across the sector, giving our clients better context around service charge trends and cost pressures affecting residential developments.
We would like to see more managing agents submit data to future service charge index data compilation – this will help to understand the environment that we are operating within, and to enable higher levels of visibility to those organisations that are looking to improve standards within the industry, though the data set has grown since the original publication.
Key Takeaways From This Year’s Report: Service Charges Have Broadly Tracked Inflation
According to the index, average budgeted service charges stand at:
- £2,418 for under 11m buildings,
- £3,507 for 11–18m buildings, and;
- £4,447 for buildings over 18m.
Budgeted service charges for 2026 rose by 6.3% compared with 2025 costs, following a 0.5% fall in 2025 from 2024.
There is also a pronounced deviation by building age, with average service charges being:
- £2,508 for buildings less than 25 years old
- £2,411 for homes built 25–50 years ago, and;
- £5,208 for properties over 50 years old.
This means building age remains the second strongest predictor of service charge levels.
Costs of Repairs & Maintenance, Contributions to Reserve Funds, and the cost of Buildings Insurance make up around 50% of the average service charge costs.
The expenditure categories with the highest rate of growth between 2024 and 2026 are:
- Building Safety Act compliance costs (up 53%, albeit this is a small portion of the overall service charge).
- Contribution to Reserve Funds (up 26%).
- On-site staff costs (up 11%).
Utilities, insurance costs, and repairs and maintenance are all down, presenting a very different picture to the 2024 index.
Regarding this year’s report, Jennings and Barrett Managing director, Joanna Bould MTPI AssocRics said:
There is need to track service charges over long term; two reports aren’t a long enough time, and some key analysis such as geographically segmented data or data according to development’s profile – mixed use, number of units, facilities within the block – would be very useful.
Overall, we’re pleased to see that insurance costs are decreasing as a proportion of service charges within this index – a pattern that we can see across our own portfolio. However, individual developments will see variations due to claims history and risk profile.
We’re also pleased to see that reserve fund contributions are rising as a percentage of service charge costs. Whilst these can sometimes be unpopular with Leaseholders, we believe that it is appropriate and beneficial for future planning and economic resiliance for Freeholders, RMCs/RTMs, and Leaseholders alike.
As a business ourselves, we’re also not surprised by the increased cost from staffing – every business is experiencing this.
Whilst the service charge index is an important piece of work, there’s still room for further analysis. Individual budgets are produced by Property Managers based on previous expenditure and future plans, and what’s important to one client may not be an important goal for another client.
We’ll continue to contribute our data to future service charge index collections and thank TPI for their work complying and analysing the data.
We also urge other companies like Jennings & Barrett to join, as well. It benefits us all to have greater levels of transparency and knowledge for both us and our stakeholders.”
Jennings & Barrett are also in the midst of our own data analysis – Our 2026 Directors’ feedback survey is open for responses until 5th June 2026.
Do you value transparency?
Jennings & Barrett do. Talk to us today about our systems and processes are increasing transparency across our portfolio and enabling our clients to regain control over their developments.