Leasehold Consent for Energy Work: Freeholders and Management Companies

If you own a flat on a lease, or rent one, the building you want to improve is usually not yours to alter. The roof, the exterior walls, the communal plant and often the windows belong to someone else, and the lease or tenancy sets out what may be changed without asking. Official planning guidance across England is consistent on the starting point: "If you are a leaseholder you may need to get permission from your landlord, freeholder or management company."¹ That permission is separate from planning permission, and both can apply at once.

The stakes are real. In an Ofgem consumer survey carried out between 19 August and 17 September 2021, 11 per cent of owner occupiers not planning low carbon heating, and 18 per cent not planning energy efficiency upgrades, gave the reason as "I'm renting/freeholder/owner will not allow".² Consent is not a formality: it is one of the most common reasons energy work in flats never starts. Even the lightest option on the market, plug-in solar panels, carries the same warning from government: permissions "may include permission from a landlord and/or building owner or freeholder permission, planning permission or listed building consent".³

Who has to ask before energy work starts

Leaseholders sit in a different position from freehold homeowners. Buying a leasehold flat gives the right to occupy for a term of years, not ownership of the structure, and the lease will normally contain restrictions on alterations. Council and Planning Portal guidance repeats the same condition across the country: a leaseholder may need permission from the landlord, freeholder or management company before installing solar panels, and that requirement sits alongside, not instead of, the planning rules.¹

Renters are in a weaker position still. A tenant cannot fix equipment to a building they do not own, and in a block of flats the freeholder's position matters even for a sitting tenant, because the landlord's own leasehold may forbid the alteration. For renters, the practical route is set out on our pages about renting and home energy and asking a landlord for energy improvements.

The type of work determines how much permission matters. Bedford Borough Council's advice note, updated June 2022, states the general rule for roof-mounted solar: placing panels on the roof of a house or flat is in most cases permitted development with no need to seek planning permission, but adds "if you are a leaseholder you may need to get permission from your landlord, freeholder or management company".⁷ In other words, even where the planning system waves a domestic solar installation through, the private contract between the leaseholder and the building's owner can still stop it. The same logic extends to heat pumps, glazing and anything that touches the structure or the exterior, because those parts of the building are usually outside the demise.

Freeholder, landlord or management company: who actually decides

The lease names the person whose consent is needed, and that is where every request starts. In practice the answer varies by building:

• The freeholder may manage the block directly and hold the decision on structural alterations.
• A head lessee may sit between the flat and the freeholder, holding the lease under which the flat is held.
• A management company, sometimes owned by the leaseholders themselves, may hold the day-to-day decision under delegated powers.

Council guidance does not distinguish between these parties, it simply lists them: permission may be needed from "your landlord, freeholder or management company".¹

Two practical points follow. First, the party that is paid is often the party to approach.⁸ Second, consent from the wrong party is no consent at all. A management company may be able to say yes to something within its delegated powers but be unable to bind the freeholder on a structural alteration, so a written request that identifies the lease clause in question, and asks who has power to waive it, saves a round of correspondence.

What is usually being sought is a licence to alter: a formal, written permission from the landlord under the lease, often conditional on the work being done properly, insured and removed or reinstated at the end of the term. The official material here sets no fee scale or fixed process for licences to alter, so costs are quoted case by case rather than standard. What it does establish is the scope: the permission requirement covers solar panels and, by the same contractual logic, other alterations to the building fabric such as heat pump units fixed to an exterior wall.

Plug-in solar: lighter kit, but the permission question survives

Plug-in solar panels, panes that sit on a windowsill, balcony rail or flat roof and feed a small inverter plugged into a socket, have been promoted by government as a way for households to generate some of their own power without a full installation. The government's announcement of 26 August 2026 on plug-in panels coming to market is explicit that the lighter hardware does not dissolve the permission question: permissions "may include permission from a landlord and/or building owner or freeholder permission, planning permission or listed building consent".³

For a flat, that means three layers can each bite:

1. The lease or tenancy. The landlord or freeholder may object to anything fixed to a balcony or facade.
2. The planning regime. In Scotland, free-standing solar is defined as "solar photovoltaics or solar thermal equipment which is not installed on a building", and it has its own permitted development class, Class 6HA covering the installation, alteration or replacement of solar photovoltaic or solar thermal equipment on a dwelling.⁹ Bristol City Council's guidance likewise tells householders to apply for planning permission if any of the listed points apply to the installation.¹¹
3. The building's protected status. Listed building consent and conservation area rules apply regardless of how small the equipment is.

Islington Council's guidance adds a warning worth heeding even for small additions: "Further installations will require planning permission."¹ A single panel may be fine; a growing array may not be. The honest summary for a flat dweller is that plug-in solar shifts the engineering problem, not the legal one. It removes scaffolding, installers and most cost, but the same three questions remain: does the lease allow it, does the planning regime allow it, and is the building protected?

Planning permission and permitted development: where the general permission stops

For most houses, solar panels are permitted development. Wirral Borough Council states that placing solar panels on the roof of a house or flat, or on a building within the grounds, is in most cases permitted development under Schedule 2, Part 14 of the General Permitted Development (England) Order 2015, and that full planning permission for flats or householder planning permission for houses is needed only when a trigger applies.¹² Bromley Council confirms that installation on residential buildings may be permitted development with no need to apply to the council for planning permission.¹³

The triggers are what matter in a flat context. Cornwall Council's guidance notes that solar panels and equipment on domestic buildings and land are usually permitted development, "but there are a few exceptions".¹⁴ Being a listed building is one. Some guidance, such as a 2014 Maidstone council note, treats flats as outside the domestic roof permission altogether: planning permission will not normally be required subject to all criteria being met, "including panels fixed parallel to the existing roof slope(s) and the property not being a listed building or a flat".¹⁵ Where the criteria fail, the application route differs by the tenure of the building: full planning permission for flats, householder application for houses.¹²

Heat pumps have their own rules. New Forest District Council states that installation of a ground source heat pump within the curtilage of a house or block of flats does not require planning permission, though listed building consent may still be needed if the property is listed, and that planning permission is needed for an air source heat pump if the house or flat is a listed building or within the garden or grounds of one.¹⁶ City of York Council adds conditions of its own for solar on industrial buildings, including where the external appearance of the building is materially affected, a reminder that non-domestic parts of a block, such as a communal plant room, sit in a different regime.¹⁷

The position across the main technologies, as stated in the council and government guidance here, is:

Listed buildings and conservation areas: the second consent regime

If the building is listed, a second consent regime engages on top of the lease and the planning rules, and it is the strictest of the three. Councils across England and Wales state the position in near-identical terms. Cornwall: "solar panels on listed buildings will need planning permission and listed building consent."⁴ Islington: "Solar panels on listed buildings require planning permission and listed building consent."¹ Frome Town Council, in guidance dated 2 September 2025, says that if the property is listed, planning permission and Listed Building Consent are always needed.¹⁹

Heat pumps attract the same treatment. Pendle Borough Council says planning permission, and in some cases listed building consent, may be required where the home is a listed building or on the site of a designed scheduled monument.²⁰ New Forest is firmer still: "If you live in a listed building, you will need both planning permission and listed building consent."¹⁶ Croydon Council and the Welsh Government's own guidance both require listed building consent for solar PV on a listed building.²¹ Richmond upon Thames extends the rule to every heat pump type: "If your property is listed, you will need listed building consent to install any type of heat pump."²³ North Northamptonshire Council lists the minor works that may require consent, including "central heating or other flues, solar panels, air con and heat recovery units and pipework".²⁴

Consent is not always refused, though. Exeter City Council's FAQ answers the question of whether solar panels can go on a listed building with: "Sometimes, but it depends on the building and how the installation would affect its character."²⁶

Some councils have gone further and pre-approved whole classes of work. Kensington and Chelsea adopted a Local Listed Building Consent Order in July 2022, described by the Local Government Association as "giving consent for solar panels on most Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings, without the need for individual listed building consent".⁵ Bristol has a similar order for the Clifton area, under which planning permission is not required for solar equipment consented under the Order on residential houses and flats, provided it complies with Class A, Part 14, Schedule 2 of the General Permitted Development Order 2015 as amended; panels on buildings within the listed building's curtilage still require planning permission.²⁷ The Royal Borough's consultation document explains the reasoning: for residential buildings the installation of solar equipment is permitted development and does not require planning permission, even on listed buildings, subject to conditions reflected in the Order.²⁸

Conservation areas add their own limits. Bath and North East Somerset Council's checklist requires planning permission for free-standing solar panels within the curtilage of a dwelling, and states that in conservation areas or the World Heritage Site they are not permitted if visible from the highway; installing panels in the curtilage of a listed building "always requires Listed Building Consent".¹⁸

Refusal, or no reply at all: where that leaves the household

A freeholder can say no, and the evidence shows they do. The Ofgem survey figures, 11 per cent for low carbon heating and 18 per cent for efficiency upgrades among owner occupiers citing an owner or freeholder who will not allow the work, are the clearest quantified statement of the barrier in the official record.² The private rented sector's own rules acknowledge refusal as an outcome rather than an anomaly: the government's guidance on PRS exemptions, updated 5 May 2026, allows a landlord to register an exemption where "consent for a relevant energy efficiency measure was required and sought, and was this consent was refused, or was granted subject to a condition that the landlord was not reasonably able to comply with".²⁹ A third party's refusal is treated as a legitimate reason the work did not happen.

Silence is harder to deal with than refusal, because no statutory deadline for a freeholder's answer to a leaseholder's consent request appears in the official material here. The nearest official benchmark is in a different regime: Scottish guidance on prior notification for free-standing wind turbines sets a period of 28 days following the date the application was received by the planning authority.¹⁰ That is a public-body timescale, not a leasehold one, but it indicates the order of magnitude public authorities treat as a reasonable wait. In the absence of a fixed rule, the protections that exist are procedural:

• Make the request in writing, so there is a record of what was asked and when.
• Ask for an acknowledgement and a decision date at the point of submission.
• Keep copies of the lease clause, the request and any reply, because a documented request is what turns silence into something that can be acted on.

A refusal is not always the end of the road. The listed building regime shows that consent frameworks can be relaxed by order, as Kensington and Chelsea did in 2022⁵, and a refused solar installation on a protected building may still be arguable on a different design or position, since the decision turns on "how the installation would affect its character".²⁶ But for an ordinary block of flats with an unresponsive freeholder, the honest position is that the leasehold structure gives the household little leverage beyond persuasion, and the energy plan has to be built around that.

Service charges, block-wide works and who pays

Energy work in a leasehold block rarely affects only one flat. A communal retrofit, such as solar on the shared roof, a block-wide heat network or replacement glazing, is carried out by the freeholder or management company and recovered through the service charge, which means every leaseholder contributes whether or not they wanted the work. The official material here does not set out the consultation procedure for major works, so the detail of that process is beyond what can be stated here; what it does establish is the direction of the relationships involved.

Where energy is resold, the first point of contact is the party that is paid.⁸ For a leaseholder in a block with a communal supply or a heat network, that party is often the freeholder or management company rather than a mainstream supplier, which concentrates both the service and the complaint route in one place. The PRS exemption guidance cuts the other way for landlords: where a landlord wanted to install a measure but consent was refused or granted on unreasonable terms, that refusal can be registered as an exemption from the minimum standards.²⁹

The barrier statistics apply with full force at block level. If 18 per cent of owner occupiers cite an owner or freeholder who will not allow efficiency upgrades², then in a block of flats, where a single freeholder's decision governs dozens of households, one refusal can freeze energy improvements for an entire building. Leaseholders who collectively hold the right to manage, or who sit on a residents' management company, hold the decision themselves, which is why the governance of the block matters as much as the technology. Our page on energy improvements in flats covers the technical side of that journey.

What consent means for a household's energy independence

Leasehold consent is the gate on the most valuable forms of energy independence for flat dwellers. Solar panels, a heat pump and better glazing all reduce what a household must buy from the grid and from a supplier, and all three, in a flat, require someone else's signature before they exist. The dependence here is not on energy but on a person: a freeholder, a head lessee or a management company whose incentives may have nothing to do with the household's bills. The Ofgem survey shows the gate is closed for a meaningful minority of households, at 11 per cent for heating and 18 per cent for efficiency work.²

The direction of travel in the planning system is towards fewer barriers, not more. The Scottish Government consulted on "proposals for expanding the range of situations in which non-domestic solar panels and domestic air source heat pumps can be installed without first requiring planning permission to be applied for".³⁰ Local Listed Building Consent Orders show the same instinct at heritage level, pre-approving solar on most Grade II and Grade II* listed homes in the boroughs that adopt them.⁵ But planning liberalisation does not touch the lease: a project that needs no planning permission at all still needs the freeholder's consent if the lease says so.¹

For a household planning energy independence from a flat, the order of operations is therefore fixed. Read the lease first, because it determines who must agree. Identify the building's status, listed, conservation area or neither, because that determines which public consents stack on top. Then make the request in writing, with a deadline, and design the proposal to be easy to approve: reversible fixings, a position that does not change the building's appearance, and evidence that the work is insured. Where the gate stays shut, the remaining levers are the lightest ones, such as plug-in solar within whatever permissions apply³, and the collective ones, through the management of the block. The fuller picture of what is possible from a rented flat or a leasehold is on our page about energy independence when you rent or live in a flat, and the wider context is in the full UK guide to home energy.