What happens to building records when a block changes managing agent
Last reviewed · owner Mike Fellows · general information, not legal advice
The records belong to the building's client, not the agent. When management changes, the outgoing agent hands over the accounts, ledgers, contracts and compliance records they hold, because they hold them on the client's behalf. The RICS residential management code treats prompt and complete handover as the professional standard, and for higher-risk buildings the golden thread must transfer intact. What goes missing is usually whatever nobody indexed while it was easy.
Who owns a block's records when the agent changes?
The client: the freeholder, the residents' management company or the right-to-manage company that appointed the agent. The agent holds the records as agent, and much of what sits behind them was paid for out of service charge money, which leaseholders' money funded and which the law holds on trust. An agent who treats the records as leverage in a handover dispute is holding someone else's property. The relationship may have ended badly; the ownership question did not change.
What must the outgoing agent hand over, and when?
The service charge accounts and the trust account balances. The leaseholder ledger and arrears position. Budgets, invoices and the audit trail behind them. Live and recent contracts. The compliance set: fire risk assessments, gas and electrical records, asbestos surveys, lift examination reports, and the certificates behind each. Section 20 consultation papers. Keys, codes, warranties and manuals. For a higher-risk building, the golden thread information, whose transfer is a statutory duty rather than a courtesy. On timing, the professional standard in the RICS code is prompt handover on termination, and a well-run exit completes within weeks. There is no single statutory deadline for the general handover, which is exactly why the contract and the code matter.
What commonly goes missing, and what does it cost?
Warranties and commissioning certificates, because they arrived years before anyone thought about filing them. Section 20 paper trails, because they lived in one person's inbox. Asbestos surveys and fire door schedules, because the contractor held them and the contractor changed. The service history that proves maintenance actually happened. The cost shows up later: surveys re-commissioned at the block's expense, service charge costs that cannot be evidenced when challenged, and sales that stall when the LPE1 asks questions the records can no longer answer.
How should an incoming agent audit what arrives?
Inventory everything against a checklist on day one, before the handover conversation cools. Check every compliance certificate's date against its renewal cycle, because the gap between agents is where renewals silently lapse. Reconcile the trust balances against the final accounts. Then put the gaps in writing to the outgoing agent immediately, while the contractual duty to deliver them is fresh and enforceable. What this audit really tests is the block's record keeping, not the outgoing agent's goodwill. A building whose records live in a structured, current register survives a change of agent without losing its history. That is the standard worth managing to, starting long before any handover.
Sources
- RICS, Service charge residential management code (3rd edition)
- Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, s.21 (1985)
- The Higher-Risk Buildings (Keeping and Provision of Information etc.) (England) Regulations 2024 (2024)
This page is general information for property professionals, not legal advice. For a decision that matters, take advice on your specific facts.