Help and Advice

Renting

Probably the best place for help and advice for private renting is Shelter - Housing Advice
This page is written in plain English and contains a wealth of information about renting, your rights and responsibilities according to the law.

There is also lots of useful information on the Government's How to rent guide

LBBD Council page: Private Tenant Rights - explains how to deal with problems, and if necessary, the council can take issues further with the landlord.

All private landlords in Barking & Dagenham must be licenced by the council.
Your deposit must be held in a deposit protection scheme.
Letting agents are not allowed to charge tenants any fees for administration, credit checks, references or renewing the tenancy.
Try to use a reputable letting agency who have been established a while and are members of ARLA/Propertymark.
- The lettings industry is largely unregulated: effectively anyone can set up as a letting agency.

Leaseholders

Leasehold is almost unique to England and Wales, and the law surrounding leasehold property is extremely complex.

There is some general information in the Reference section of this website.
- This is not legal advice, but is mostly drawn from other reliable sources, listing applicable laws.

My suggestions to leaseholders facing problems:

Read the terms of your lease very carefully. The lease sets out the basis of service charges, ground rent and other obligations.
Don't do it alone: get input from other leaseholders (hello!)
Never, ever withhold payment of disputed service charges or ground rent.
- This can allow proceedings to forfeit the lease if you do not pay.
- Pay “under protest” and challenge later.
Ask the managing agent for clarification on any building, service charge, ground rent or insurance issues.
- My experience with the managing agent is:
  - Keep emails as brief as possible and ask only one or two questions per email.
Try to deal with things one issue at a time.
- Often when we start to look in to things, other issues are discovered. Make a list of these and deal with the immediately important one first.
Get everything in writing.

If in doubt, get legal advice from a solicitor specialising in housing law.

Think very carefully before launching legal action.
- The lease can contain terms that allow the landlord/freeholder to recover their legal costs through service or administration charges.
- Even if you win the case, you could still end up being landed with their legal costs as well as your own! (Great system!)

Sources of information

Leasehold Advisory Service - information and free (limited) legal advice.
Leasehold Knowledge Partnership

Page last updated: Thu, 10-Sep-2026