If you take premises in a multi-occupational building, you will pay a service charge for costs incurred by the landlord in relation to the building. This will mean at least the cost of any repairs to the structure and exterior, and the services within the building. It might also include a big item, like the lift.
If you are taking a lock-up shop on the ground floor of the building, you will quite understand that structural and external costs should be shared proportionately among the tenants in the building, including you. Service charges are usually apportioned between tenants according to the area they occupy.
But you might have a moment’s pause when you look at “lift” on the list of services you have to pay for in your first service charge bill. You are not using the lift.
Tenants with premises on the ground floor would make the same point, but they would usually be persuaded that they are one integral part of a multi-occupational building, and if the toilets are on upper floors, their staff may need to use the lift to get to them.
But you are in a step further away from that. You and your employees and customers don’t go into the front door of the multi-occupational building. You have your own front door to your lock-up shop.
Toilets come into play again. If you have to use toilets within the building on upper floors, then the landlords can reasonably use the same argument as with ground floor office tenants. But if you have your own self-contained toilets, you may feel rather unhappy that you are paying the same as everyone else for the lift
Unfortunately, if you took your lease with the lift listed among the service charge items you have to pay for, and you did not negotiate a cap on your service charge liability so that lift costs would be excluded, you are stuck with it.