The Developer Handover: Taking Over a New Build RMC Without Inheriting Its Defects

On almost every new development, the management company already exists before anyone moves in. The housebuilder incorporates it, appoints its own staff or its solicitors as directors, chooses the managing agent, and sets the first service charge budget. Residents become members as they complete, but the board stays with the developer.

At some point that reverses. The developer's appointees resign, residents take the seats, and a volunteer board inherits an estate it had no part in specifying, built by a company that may be a special purpose vehicle heading for dissolution. This handover looks nothing like taking over an established block. There is no filing history to review and no arrears ledger worth reading. What there is instead is a defects position, an adoption position and a first budget that was written to help sell houses.

This is the companion to our general handover checklist for new RMC and RTM directors. Everything there still applies. This article covers what is different when the outgoing board works for the housebuilder. It is written for England, though several of the provisions it cites extend more widely.

The one thing that makes this handover different

In an established block, the people handing over stay in the building. They live with the consequences, and they will still be there next year. A developer will not be. Once the last plot completes and the defects period closes, the site team disbands, and on many schemes the development company itself is wound up.

That single fact reorders your priorities. Money and record keeping can be repaired later. Anything that depends on the developer still existing and still caring - defects, missing documents, unfinished adoption, commissioning data, warranty registrations - has a closing window. Do those first, even if the accounts are a mess.

Establish three things before anything else

• Who owns the freehold today. Do not take anyone's word for it. A copy of the title from HM Land Registry costs £7 per document online and settles it. On many schemes the developer sells the freehold to an investor before or shortly after handover, so the entity your leases name may not be the entity you are dealing with. Get the title for the common parts and the estate land too, because they are often separate titles and are sometimes never transferred at all.
• What the articles say about control. Developer-incorporated management companies frequently give the housebuilder a special share, weighted voting or the right to appoint directors until a trigger: the sale of the last plot, the adoption of the roads, or a longstop date. Until that trigger, residents can hold every membership and still not control the board. Read the articles as filed, and find your trigger.
• Whether the development is actually finished. On a phased scheme, later phases change the apportionment, the shared infrastructure and the budget. Ask for the phasing plan and the intended final unit count, and check what your lease says happens to percentages as phases complete. A board that sets a ten year plan against phase one numbers will redo it twice.

Defects: the part with a deadline

Snagging is the cosmetic list from the first few weeks. Defects are the failures that appear later, and they are the reason a developer handover is worth taking seriously. Several different routes exist, they overlap untidily, and each has its own clock.

• The developer's own defects liability. Usually a fixed period after practical completion, set by the contract rather than by statute, during which the housebuilder returns to put things right. Get the end date in writing for the common parts specifically, not just for individual plots, and get the outstanding schedule before it closes.
• The structural warranty. NHBC Buildmark or an alternative such as LABC, Premier or Checkmate. The common pattern is a first period where the builder is responsible followed by structural cover running to year ten, but the cover, the exclusions and the claims process differ by provider and by policy year. Ask for the policy documents for the common parts, not only the plot certificates residents received, and diarise the transition date between the two phases. Claims have notification requirements that are easy to miss.
• The New Homes Quality Code, where the developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board. It gives buyers a complaints route through the New Homes Ombudsman Service, with a two year window from reservation or completion, whichever is later. The route belongs to the individual buyer rather than to the company, so the board's role is to point residents at it while they are still in time. Registration is not universal, so check whether your developer is signed up before relying on it.
• The Defective Premises Act 1972. This is the one most boards do not know about. Section 135 of the Building Safety Act 2022, in force since 28 June 2022, extended the limitation period for claims under section 1 of the 1972 Act to 30 years for rights of action that accrued before that commencement date, and 15 years for those accruing after it. Dwellings completed long before your board existed can therefore still be within time, though the 30 years runs from when the right of action accrued rather than from today. Note also that the section 1 duty is owed to those who acquire an interest in the dwelling, so the claim usually belongs to leaseholders rather than to a management company that owns nothing. This is a legal question, not a management one: if you suspect a serious defect, take advice rather than working it out from an article.
• Where the developer has dissolved or has no assets, the Building Safety Act 2022 also created building liability orders, which can extend a relevant liability to associated companies. Again, advice rather than DIY, but knowing the route exists changes how a board responds to "that company no longer trades".
• Cladding and external wall remediation, and where a new building actually stands. The coverage of this is dominated by blocks a decade or more old, and it tends to blur routes that are gated quite differently. Paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 to the Building Safety Act bars any service charge for cladding remediation under a qualifying lease, and needs no relevant defect. Cladding remediation there means removing or replacing part of a cladding system that forms the outer wall of an external wall system and is unsafe, so it is narrower than external wall remediation at large. A qualifying lease is a long lease of a single dwelling in a relevant building, carrying a service charge, granted before 14 February 2022 (or a later lease that replaced one, under the connected replacement lease rules in section 119A), where at that date the flat was the tenant's only or principal home or they owned no more than two other dwellings in the United Kingdom. A flat first sold in 2023 does not get there. Paragraph 2 is the opposite shape: it needs no qualifying lease at all, but it needs a relevant defect and a landlord who is responsible for that defect or associated with whoever is, tested against whoever was landlord on 14 February 2022. Remediation orders and remediation contribution orders under sections 123 and 124 need a relevant defect but no qualifying lease.
• Whether your building has a relevant defect at all. Section 120 defines it by reference to relevant works, and the obvious limb is construction or conversion completed within the thirty years ending 28 June 2022, which a genuinely new building fails. Do not stop there. A second limb catches works undertaken or commissioned by or on behalf of a landlord or management company where those works were completed inside that period, whatever the building's own completion date. On a phased scheme, or a block that was under construction well before mid 2022, that is a question for advice rather than an assumption. Settle the threshold question first, though, because it disposes of most blocks on its own. A relevant building is a self-contained building or part in England containing at least two dwellings and either at least 11 metres high or at least five storeys, so a good deal of new-build housing never reaches the regime at all. On top of that, a building is excluded outright, for every one of these routes, if its freehold is leaseholder owned, if collective enfranchisement or a right under Part 1 or Part 3 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 has been exercised, or if it is commonhold. The leaseholder-owned freehold limb is the one that catches a great many resident-run blocks, including many developer-transferred RMC freeholds, though the test is that the freehold is solely owned by tenants in the building, so a share retained by the developer itself, which is not a tenant, or an estate-wide freehold reaching beyond the building, is worth checking before you assume it. Right to manage on its own does not: an RTM block is still a relevant building, whatever you may read to the contrary. Separately, and on its own quite different measure of height, the developer remediation contract, where your developer signed it, covers buildings of at least 11 metres effective height developed or refurbished in the thirty years to 4 April 2022.
• What it changes for a new build board. Where Schedule 8 is out of reach, it cannot be used to block the bill at source, and the ordinary machinery applies instead: reasonableness under section 19, consultation under section 20, and a challenge to payability under section 27A. Do not count on the two provisions that look like they should fill the gap, because in a tenant owned or run building neither is operative, and for quite different reasons. Section 20D of the 1985 Act would require a landlord to chase grants, insurance, guarantees and claims against the developer, the designer and whoever carried out the works, and to credit what is recovered, but it bites only on buildings and works described in regulations, the government consulted on those regulations in February and March 2023 and has never published an outcome, and the inserting provision is commenced only for the purpose of making them. Section 20F would exclude certain costs incurred by or on behalf of a relevant person in connection with Part 4 of the Building Safety Act in a higher-risk building: costs arising solely from a regulator penalty or enforcement action, the legal costs of special measures order proceedings, and costs incurred by reason of that person's negligence, breach of contract or unlawful act, or that of anyone acting on their behalf. A relevant person there is the landlord if the landlord is an accountable person for the building, otherwise any superior landlord who is, and in either case a special measures manager for the building. That third exclusion is the sharpest thing to lose. Section 20F was commenced for every purpose except in relation to a tenant owned or run building, and that expressly includes a block with a resident management company carrying Part 4 obligations under the lease, or with an RTM company. A higher-risk block whose freehold stayed with an investor, with no RTM and the Part 4 obligations on the landlord, is outside that carve-out, and section 20F operates there. Note the asymmetry either way: section 30D, which puts those building safety costs into the lease in the first place, was commenced with no such carve-out.
• What a new building does have. A live structural warranty. A Defective Premises Act claim running the full 15 years from completion rather than a legacy defect nobody will own, though as above that is usually the leaseholders' claim to bring rather than the company's. And, in a building with a storey at least 18 metres above ground, the restriction on combustible materials in external walls, which has applied to building work since 21 December 2018, alongside the ban on metal composite material at any height, which has applied since 1 December 2022 subject to a transitional for projects already notified before that date and started either by then or within the following six months. So the board's job is to establish liability against whoever built it and recover, rather than to argue the charge away. Building liability orders help there, because they attach to a relevant liability such as one under the 1972 Act rather than to the thirty year window, and can be made against an associated company in respect of the liability of one that has already been dissolved.

Adoption: the trap that never expires

Adoption is the question of whether the public authorities take over the estate infrastructure or the residents maintain it forever. Nothing else you inherit has such a large and permanent effect on the service charge, and it is routinely misunderstood at handover because the sales brochure and the legal position rarely match.

• Roads and footpaths. Ask whether there is an agreement under section 38 of the Highways Act 1980 with the highway authority, whether a bond is in place, and what remains outstanding before adoption. "It will be adopted" is not a status. An agreement with a live bond is a status.
• Sewers and drainage. Ask about a section 104 agreement under the Water Industry Act 1991 with the water company, and specifically what covers any pumping station. Private pumping stations are a recurring source of large unexpected costs.
• Everything designed never to be adopted. Attenuation ponds and other sustainable drainage features, open space, play areas, unadopted street lighting and its electricity supply, bin stores, private drives. These stay with the estate. Ask for the maintenance regime and the design life of each, because that list is your long term budget.
• Estate rentcharges on freehold houses. Where houses on the estate pay an estate charge rather than a service charge, the mechanism is usually a rentcharge, and the remedies attached to rentcharges under section 121 of the Law of Property Act 1925 are notoriously severe. If your company collects from freeholders as well as leaseholders, get advice on what your enforcement powers actually are before you use them. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 removed those remedies for regulated rentcharges with effect from 27 November 2023, but deliberately left estate rentcharges alone, and its wider provisions on estate management charges are not yet in force.

The document pack to demand

Send this as a single written request, addressed to the developer and copied to the managing agent, before the outgoing directors resign. Getting it afterwards is an order of magnitude harder.

The construction record

• The health and safety file. Under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 the file passes at the end of the project to the client, from the principal designer or, where that appointment has already ended, from the principal contractor. The client is the developer, not you: where the client disposes of its interest it complies by passing the file to whoever acquires that interest, which is the route by which it should reach your company. It is the single most valuable document in the pack and the one most boards never receive. Without it, every future contractor starts from nothing.
• As-built drawings, operation and maintenance manuals, and commissioning certificates for every piece of plant: lifts, pumps, gates, door entry, ventilation, communal heating, sprinklers, alarms and emergency lighting.
• Building Regulations completion certificates, energy performance certificates, and the approved plans.
• Remaining manufacturer warranties for plant, with the servicing conditions attached to them. Cover is regularly voided by a board that switches maintenance contractor without noticing the condition.

Safety

• The fire strategy and the fire risk assessment, with the outstanding actions. A new building is not automatically a compliant one, and a first assessment produced at handover often carries a list.
• Building Safety Act position if the building is higher-risk - at least 18 metres or at least seven storeys, with two or more residential units - including registration with the Building Safety Regulator, who the accountable person is, and the golden thread information as handed over.
• Residential evacuation duties under the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025, in force since 6 April 2026, which reach buildings above 11 metres operating a simultaneous evacuation strategy as well as taller ones.
• Asbestos is unlikely in new construction, but the duty to manage under regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 still needs a recorded position rather than an assumption.

Land, infrastructure and utilities

• Title numbers and plans for the freehold, the common parts and the estate land, plus any transfer that was promised but not completed.
• The section 38 and section 104 agreements, bond details, and the current adoption correspondence.
• Any planning obligations that bind the estate, including section 106 agreements and any management plan they require.
• Landlord utility accounts in the company's name, with meter numbers and current contracts.
• Communal heating. If the scheme has a heat network, this deserves its own attention: get the supply contract, the metering and billing arrangements, the heat loss position and who bears it. Heat networks in Great Britain came under Ofgem regulation on 27 January 2026, with consumer protection rules covering pricing, information and treatment of customers, so both the operator's obligations and the residents' rights have changed recently.

Money and contracts

• The service charge accounts for every period since the first completion, with the developer contributions for unsold units clearly identified, and evidence they were actually paid.
• Any deficit funding arrangement and its end date. Many developers underwrite the shortfall while they still own units. Establish precisely when that stops, because that is the date the real cost appears in residents' bills.
• The managing agent's contract as signed, with its term and notice period. Do not assume the consultation rules protected you here: under regulation 3(1)(d) of the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003, an agreement is not a qualifying long term agreement at all if there were no tenants of the premises when it was entered into and its term does not exceed five years. A developer-signed agent contract usually meets both conditions, so no consultation was ever required. It falls inside the regime, with consultation and the £100 per leaseholder per accounting period limit, only if the term exceeds five years or leaseholders already existed on an earlier phase. A renewal signed later, once residents are in, is a qualifying long term agreement on ordinary principles if its term runs beyond twelve months.
• The insurance schedule placed by the developer's broker, with the sum insured basis, the claims history and any commission disclosure.
• The company records: articles as filed, register of members reconciled against completions, the Companies House authentication code, and the personal code of any continuing director.

The questions to put to the developer

Ask these while the site team still exists. Most are answerable in a sentence, and the ones that are not tell you where to look.

• "How many units remain unsold, and who is paying their service charge?" This sets both the voting arithmetic and the cash position. It also tells you how close the deficit funding is to ending.
• "Is the freehold being retained, transferred to this company, or sold?" If the answer is sold, ask to whom and when. A ground rent investor as freeholder is a different management relationship from a resident-owned freehold, and it is better learned now than from a demand.
• "Which roads and sewers are adopted, which are under agreement, and where is the bond?" Follow up with: what is outstanding before adoption completes, and who is chasing it after you leave.
• "When does the defects period end for the common parts, and what is still open?" Ask for the schedule in writing. A verbal "nothing outstanding" ages very badly.
• "Who holds the health and safety file, the principal designer or the principal contractor?" Ask for both names. If nobody can answer, escalate immediately rather than politely. It gets harder every month.
• "What is the first full year's realistic budget, as opposed to the marketing budget?" Ask what was deliberately excluded or set optimistically. Site teams will often tell you plainly.
• "Is the developer registered with the New Homes Quality Board?" It determines which complaints route exists for residents.
• "Which company signed each contract, and does that company still trade?" Special purpose vehicles are normal in development. Knowing which entity carries which obligation is what makes a future claim possible.

Reading the answers

None of this is about bad faith. Most site teams are helpful, and most gaps are the ordinary result of a project ending and people moving to the next one. But some answers reliably predict a harder decade.

• No health and safety file, no as-builts, no commissioning data. Every survey, every repair and every future contractor now starts by rediscovering the building at the residents' expense.
• Adoption described as imminent for several years. Check the bond and the outstanding works list. Estates plan for adoption and then maintain the roads for twenty years.
• A first year budget with no reserve fund contribution. Common, and it means the ten year plan starts at zero while the plant ages from day one. Our guide to planned maintenance for blocks of flats sets out the cycles to build that plan against.
• A long agent contract signed by the developer with a long notice period. Not necessarily a bad agent, but it constrains the first real decision your board gets to make, and if it was signed before there were any tenants and runs for five years or less, it probably escaped consultation entirely. Over five years and it did not.
• Unsold units and a developer still controlling the vote. Perfectly normal, and worth simply knowing, because it tells you what your board can and cannot decide this year.

If the developer will not engage

Escalation is ordinary, not hostile. In rough order: put the request in writing with a deadline; escalate to the developer's customer care and then to a named director; use the warranty provider's resolution service; where individual buyers are still inside the two year window, ask them to raise it through the developer's Code complaints procedure and then the New Homes Ombudsman Service, which is their route rather than the board's; and take advice on the statutory routes, which may include claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972 within the extended limitation periods, and building liability orders where the contracting entity has been dissolved. Where the problem is the management rather than the construction, leaseholders retain the normal routes: a challenge to payability at the First-tier Tribunal under section 27A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and the right to manage where the structure allows it.

Your first six months

• Immediately. Buy the titles from HM Land Registry. Read the articles and find the control trigger. Write and send the document request. Establish the defects period end date.
• Months one to three. Chase the health and safety file and warranty documents specifically, separately from everything else. Get the adoption position in writing from the highway authority and the water company rather than from the developer. Commission an independent condition survey of the common parts before the defects window closes, which is the single highest value thing a new board can spend money on.
• Months four to six. Rebuild the budget from the real costs rather than the developer's figure, and start reserve fund contributions even if they are modest. Put the compliance cycle into one calendar. Write to residents explaining the difference between the marketing budget and the real one before the first increased demand lands, because the explanation is far better received in advance.

The bottom line

A developer handover is a transfer of information under a deadline. The building will still be there in ten years; the company that built it may not be, and neither will the people who know how it was put together. Everything that depends on them should be collected first, in writing, while somebody is still answering the phone.

Once you have it, keeping it findable is the rest of the job. Marklet gives a resident board a shared document store, a recurring compliance calendar and a record of decisions, so the file you fought for at handover is still usable by the board after next.