Leasehold
The managing agent asks who the accountable person is. Why is that not a question the home survey answers?
Because the home survey does not appoint, identify or become the accountable person. The managing agent is asking about a role in the building's safety arrangements. The surveyor is the person you instructed to report on condition. Those are different jobs. The PDF does not answer the agent's question, and you should not volunteer the surveyor as that person. Take the question back to the management papers. Do not invent a set of duties for the survey to discharge.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Written for buyers in England and Wales unless this answer says otherwise. No named surveyor has signed this page. It is general guidance, not a report on your house, and not legal advice.
What is the fuller explanation?
Buyers get copied into block correspondence and assume every official-sounding question belongs in the survey. This one does not. A condition report can describe a stair, a door, a wall or a leak. It cannot say who carries a named safety role for the building, and it cannot accept that role by having visited the flat. If the agent needs a name, the agent's own records are the place to look, not the back page of your report.
Reply, if you reply at all, through the solicitor, and say the survey is a condition report for the buyer. Do not pad that reply with a job description you have constructed for the phrase accountable person. The surveyor will not be helped by being nominated in an email. Keep any real condition points, such as a damaged door or a stained wall, in the survey where they belong. The role question stays outside it.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Will this report name an accountable person for the building?
- Which of your comments are condition only, and nothing to do with that role?
- Should the agent's question be answered from the management papers instead?
What are the typical next steps?
- Do not name the surveyor as the accountable person.
- Send the agent's question back to the solicitor and the management papers.
- Keep the survey for the defects it actually describes.
Costs vary with the building and with who you instruct. Where this page does not cite a published figure, ask the surveyor, a relevant specialist, or your solicitor for a written quote. Do not treat a forum average as the price.
Also asked about this
If the surveyor inspected the common stair, have they taken on the role?
No. Inspecting a stair is a condition look. It does not appoint the surveyor, and it does not answer the agent's question about who the accountable person is.
Can the report be rewritten so the role is filled in?
No. Filling in that role is not what the inspection did. Ask the managing agent to use the building's own papers, and leave the survey as a condition report.