Right to Manage: Take Control Without Buying the Freehold

Right to Manage lets leaseholders take over building management without buying the freehold or proving fault. How it works and who qualifies.

What Is the Right to Manage?

If your main problem with leasehold is how the building is run, rather than who owns it, the Right to Manage (RTM) may be the right tool. It lets the leaseholders take over the management of their building from the landlord without buying the freehold, and without having to show that the landlord has done anything wrong. This guide explains what you gain and do not gain, who qualifies, how a claim runs and what it costs.

What Is the Right to Manage?

RTM was introduced by Part 2 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, and expanded by the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. Leaseholders form an RTM company, which takes over the landlord's management functions: arranging repairs and maintenance, appointing and instructing the managing agent, setting and collecting service charges, and dealing with consents under the leases. The freeholder keeps ownership and the ground rent.

RTM vs Buying the Freehold

• Ownership: RTM leaves the freehold with the landlord; collective enfranchisement transfers it to you.
• Price: there is no premium for RTM, because you are not buying anything. You pay your own set-up costs.
• Fault: no need to prove poor management. (If you can prove fault, a separate route exists: asking the First-tier Tribunal to appoint a manager.)
• Ground rent and lease length: RTM does not reduce ground rent or extend your lease. For that you need an extension or collective enfranchisement.
• Control: RTM gives control of day-to-day management but not of decisions about the freehold itself, such as selling or redeveloping it.

Who Qualifies?

• The building: a self-contained building, or self-contained part of a building, with at least two flats.
• Two-thirds of the flats must be held by qualifying tenants (broadly, long leaseholders whose lease was granted for more than 21 years).
• Participation: qualifying tenants of at least half of the flats must be members of the RTM company.
• Non-residential floor area: up to 50%, raised from 25% on 3 March 2025. This brought more mixed-use buildings into scope. The 25% limit still applies for buying the freehold collectively.
• Resident landlord exception: small buildings where the landlord lives in the building may be excluded. Check the current rules for your building.
• No minimum ownership period: the two-year ownership rule, which applied to lease extensions and enfranchisement, was removed on 31 January 2025 for those routes.

How a Claim Runs

1. Form the RTM company. This is a company limited by guarantee with articles prescribed by regulations. Qualifying leaseholders are its members.
2. Invite the other qualifying leaseholders to join. The company serves a notice of invitation to participate on every qualifying tenant who is not yet a member.
3. Serve the claim notice. At least 14 days after the invitations, the company serves a claim notice on the landlord, any management company and other relevant parties. It must give a date, at least one month later, by which a counter-notice can be given.
4. Counter-notice. The landlord can only object by saying the company was not entitled to acquire the right to manage. If it does, the company can apply to the First-tier Tribunal to decide.
5. Acquisition date. If there is no counter-notice, the company takes over management three months after the date set for the counter-notice (or three months after a Tribunal decision in the company's favour).
6. Handover. The landlord must hand over information and the accrued service charge funds the company needs, shortly after the acquisition date.

The notices have strict content and timing requirements and an invalid notice can fail, so most groups use a specialist adviser.

What It Costs

You will need to pay for forming the company, specialist help with the notices and a managing agent (or the time of volunteers if you self-manage). There is no standard fee schedule, so get a fixed-fee quote for the claim from a specialist.

The biggest change is that, since 3 March 2025, leaseholders are generally no longer liable for the landlord's costs of an RTM claim. Before that date the RTM company usually had to pay the landlord's reasonable costs, whatever the outcome of the claim. Now each side normally bears its own, which reduces the financial risk of starting a claim. The same cost reform for lease extensions and enfranchisement is in the 2024 Act but not yet in force.

After the Takeover

• Running the building: the company is responsible for repairs and maintenance, health and safety, fire risk assessments and, in higher-risk buildings, Building Safety Act duties, and for consulting leaseholders on major works.
• Service charges: the company sets budgets and collects charges, and must account properly for them and for reserve funds.
• Insurance and consents: arrangements depend on the leases; take advice on who insures and who gives consents.
• Directors' duties: the directors must file accounts and confirmation statements, hold meetings and act within the company's articles. Not every leaseholder wants this role, so plan for succession.
• Landlord's rights continue: the freeholder still receives ground rent and still owns the building, so RTM does not change that.

Limitations and Next Steps

RTM does not give you a longer lease, reduce ground rent or give you ownership. Many buildings use RTM as a first step to improve management, then move to collective enfranchisement later if owners want the freehold. If your issue is a specific unreasonable service charge, you can also challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal without taking over management. See service charges and the commission ban.