Common parts

Leases often call these the "retained parts", because the landlord keeps them rather than letting them. Whoever manages the building (the landlord, an RTM company or a residents' management company) usually maintains them, and their costs go into the service chargeService chargeThe amount leaseholders pay, under their leases, towards the cost of services, repairs, maintenance, improvements, insurance and management of their building, which goes up or down with the actual costs..

Legal duties that attach to them

• Fire safety: the Fire Safety Order applies to the common parts, and to the structure, external walls and flat entrance doors of blocks of flats. Someone must be the responsible personResponsible person (fire safety)The person or organisation in control of a building's common parts in connection with a business or undertaking, who is legally responsible for fire safety there under the Fire Safety Order. and keep a fire risk assessmentFire risk assessmentA written assessment, which the law requires for the common parts of a block of flats, of the risk of fire and what is needed to keep people safe, kept under regular review..
• Asbestos: the duty to manage asbestos applies to the common parts of blocks of flats (not inside the flats).
• Health and safety: the common parts must be kept reasonably safe for people using them, including visitors and contractors.

Check your leases: sometimes balconies, gardens or parking spaces belong to particular flats rather than being shared.