What is a schedule of dilapidations?

The short answer

A schedule of dilapidations is a document — usually prepared by a building surveyor for a commercial landlord — that lists, item by item, the ways a tenant has failed to meet their lease obligations to repair, decorate, and reinstate the property, together with the remedial work required and its cost. In short: it is the landlord's quantified statement of what the tenant has left undone, and what it will cost to put right.

Interim vs terminal

• Interim schedule — served during the lease term, where breaches are serious enough that the landlord wants them remedied before the lease ends.
• Terminal schedule — served at or shortly after the end of the term. This is the common one, dealing with the state of the property as the tenant hands it back.

Interim claims carry an extra hurdle. Under the Leasehold Property (Repairs) Act 1938, for leases originally granted for seven years or more with at least three years left to run, the landlord must serve a section 146 notice and — if the tenant serves a counter-notice — obtain the leave of the court before pursuing damages or forfeiture. Terminal claims do not engage the 1938 Act.

What it's built on — the lease covenants

A dilapidations claim only exists to the extent the lease creates obligations. The schedule is therefore anchored to the specific repairing, decorating, and reinstatement covenants in that lease, and to any documents that define the condition the tenant must return the property in — commonly a schedule of condition attached at the start of the term, which can limit the tenant's liability to no worse than the recorded condition. Every item should trace back to a covenant; items that don't are the first thing a tenant's surveyor will challenge.

The cap that limits the claim — section 18

For leases in England and Wales, section 18(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 limits what a landlord can actually recover for disrepair, in two distinct ways:

• The diminution cap (first limb). Damages cannot exceed the amount by which the breaches have reduced the value of the landlord's reversion — their interest in the property. In practice the recoverable sum is the lower of the cost of the works and the diminution in value, rather than the cost of works as a matter of course.
• The supersession bar (second limb). Where it is shown that the premises are to be pulled down, or so structurally altered that the repairs would be rendered valueless, at or shortly after the end of the term, no damages are recoverable at all — the claim falls away entirely, not merely discounted.

This is why a credible dilapidations claim turns on value, not just the cost of works, and why the landlord's intentions for the building matter so much. The diminution figure is itself a valuation exercise — usually a separate valuer's job, not the building surveyor's.

The Protocol and the Quantified Demand

Terminal dilapidations claims are expected to follow the Dilapidations Protocol (formally the Pre-Action Protocol for Claims for Damages in Relation to the Physical State of Commercial Property at Termination of a Tenancy), supported by the RICS professional standard Dilapidations in England and Wales (7th edition, December 2023). Under it the landlord serves a schedule and a Quantified Demand — usually within 56 days of the lease ending — setting out what is claimed and why; the tenant's Response follows (typically within a further 56 days); and the surveyors on each side endorse their positions. The aim, as with all pre-action protocols, is to narrow the issues and settle without proceedings.

When it becomes a Scott Schedule

If the dispute does proceed towards court, the schedule is typically recast as a Scott Schedule — the same items, with added columns for the tenant's response and the judge's eventual decision on each line. We cover that format in What is a Scott Schedule?. At that stage the surveyor's overriding duty is to the court under CPR Part 35, not to the instructing party.

Who prepares it

Schedules of dilapidations are prepared by building surveyors — acting for the landlord (serving the schedule) or the tenant (responding to it). Where the matter becomes expert evidence, the surveyor must be able to justify each item and each cost independently of who is paying.

How SurveyorSuite fits this

The Dilapidations template produces the itemised schedule — covenant reference, breach, remedial work, and cost per item — and shares its inspection data with the Scott Schedule and Schedule of Condition templates, so the same items don't get re-keyed as a claim moves from demand to court bundle. You stay the named surveyor; the software handles the structure, costing format, and export.

See the Dilapidations template →