Leasehold
One year of service-charge accounts is missing from the pack the solicitor asked for. Does the survey PDF fill that missing year?
No. A missing year in the service-charge accounts stays missing. The survey PDF is the record of the inspection, not a spare ledger for the year the agent did not send. Photographs of a roof or a hallway cannot reconstruct income, expenditure or a reserve movement for twelve months that never arrived in the solicitor's pack.
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 sometimes flip to the back of the report hoping the surveyor photographed a spreadsheet or copied last year's totals into an appendix. That is not what the visit was for. The management pack is the conveyancing bundle the solicitor asks the landlord or the agent to provide. Accounts live there. GOV.UK's leasehold guidance is about how service charges are explained and challenged, which still needs the papers themselves. A quiet PDF is not a reconstructed year.
Chase the gap through the solicitor and say which year is absent, rather than asking the survey firm to invent a column. Until that year arrives you cannot tell whether a large repair was already collected, written off or never billed. Do not treat a condition comment on the block as a substitute profit and loss. The inspection and the accounts answer different questions, and only one of them is in the survey file.
What should you ask your surveyor?
- Did any account pages get attached to the report, or only photographs?
- Which defects should sit beside the missing year once the solicitor has it?
- Are you able to say the pack was incomplete without calling that a rating?
What are the typical next steps?
- Ask the solicitor to chase the missing year by name.
- Do not reconstruct that year from survey photographs.
- Read the roof comment again when the accounts finally arrive.
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 two other years are present, is the gap harmless?
No. A gap is still a gap. The years you do hold do not speak for the year that was never sent.
Can the agent email the year straight to the surveyor to paste in?
They can email the solicitor. Pasting it into the survey would mix a landlord's ledger with an inspection the surveyor has already signed.