I remember a number of *many* years ago, this girl was in tears, they were hit (each flat) with a £600 bill to repaint the front of the building, they had no say in it, not about whether the repainting was needed or who would carry out the works.
The idea is to give the leaseholders the right to say "no", and the right to assign any management agency they wish, including themselves, wholly or partly. This is the only way to allow competition as in a free market, and drive prices down. That is how it works in Greece, where a huge number of properties are flats and are mostly managed by the residents, including paying for common use electricity, heating, cleaning, lifts, and maintenance. There are management companies that take over the admin and because it is a free market they charge very reasonable prices, and their fees are stated and visible. In smaller buildings typically one of the residents does it for a year and then it rotates. My father had me doing it from the age of maybe 13 and there were no computers then, no Excel, I had to gather receipts and bills and divide by the number of flats and their square footage, then go knocking on doors to collect payments. However a single resident may refuse to pay for whatever expense the powers that be have devised, for example they recently asked us to pay for a brand new intercom system with live video feed etc. We simply said no we don't want it.
Back in the UK, I have just found out, the flats that my son was looking at have service charges of £5500 per year plus £750 ground rent... So it does not seem we are buying a flat after all.