Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

55: After Clause 45, insert the following new Clause—
“Abolition of forfeiture of a long lease(1) This section applies to any right of forfeiture or re-entry in relation to a dwelling held on a long lease which arises either—(a) under the terms of that lease, or(b) under or in consequence of section 146(1) of the Law of Property Act 1925.(2) The rights referred to in subsection (1) are abolished.(3) In this section— “dwelling” means a building or part of a building occupied or intended to be occupied as a separate dwelling, together with any yard, garden, or outhouses and appurtenances belonging to it or usually enjoyed with it;“lease” means a lease at law or in equity and includes a sub-lease, but does not include a mortgage term;“long lease” has the meaning given by sections 76 and 77 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would abolish the right of forfeiture in relation to residential long leases in instances where the leaseholder is in breach of covenant.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, our amendments in this group go to the heart of one of the current serious injustices relating to leasehold: that of forfeiture. It is quite simply anachronistic, wholly disproportionate and complete imbalance in the relationship between leaseholders and landlords. In some circumstances, a debt of a few hundred pounds can trigger the ability to take possession of the property. What my honourable friend the shadow Minister for Housing in the other place called

“the chilling effect that results from its mere existence”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/2/24; col. 203.]

puts landlords in a nearly unassailable position of strength in disputes with leaseholders, as I hope I illustrated in my earlier quote from an elderly leaseholder. Unfortunately, the threat of forfeiture is too often used routinely by landlords as a first resort when seeking to recover alleged arrears in payments from leaseholders, and so often invoked to deter leaseholders from disputing any unreasonable costs and defending claims.

Our first amendment is reasonably straightforward: it is basically a matter of disproportionality and consistency. A real estate solicitor summed it up very neatly in his evidence to the Commons committee. He said:

“It is extremely welcome to see the government’s proposed clause 59 and amendment NC4 relating to the abolition of remedies relating to rentcharges. It is also very welcome to see the proposed amendment NC1 which would abolish forfeiture in long residential leases, which is long-overdue. However, there is a key point that does not seem to be addressed: forfeiture in relation to rentcharges. Rentcharge deeds often reserve a right of forfeiture for non-payment which operates in the same manner as a forfeiture clause in a lease. The Committee clearly recognises that the expropriation of somebody’s property as a remedy for breaches of a lease on an extra-judicial basis is entirely inappropriate and unfair. Therefore, it should equally concern the Committee that the same remedy is available in many cases in relation to rentcharges. Therefore, I would ask that the Committee either add to proposed amendment NC1 or propose an additional clause to abolish any right of forfeiture under a rentcharge”.


This amendment would ensure that leaseholders are in no worse a position than anyone else subject to a challenge to ownership would come under. So, while we accept the principle that legal remedies should be available, we do not believe that forfeiture provides adequately for leaseholders to challenge or defend themselves from repossession.

Our other amendments are a bit more complicated on paper, as they would replace Clause 111, which currently provides remedies for arrears of rent charges where the rent charge remains unpaid for a period of 40 days, one of which is the ability for a rent charge owner to take possession of a freehold property in instances where a freehold homeowner fails to pay a rent charge. But in essence it is very simple. It would simply mean that debts have to be sued for, as you would for any other kind of debt. In short, the 1925 Act provides for the power to seize freehold houses for non-payment of a rent charge, even if the arrears are merely a few pounds, and allows the rent charge holder to retain possession or render it, in effect, worthless by means of maintaining a 99-year lease over it.

In our view, the remedies provided in the 1925 Act are a wholly disproportionate and draconian legacy of Victorian-era property law. The 1977 Act prohibited the creation of new rent charges and provided for existing rent charges to be abolished in 2037, but 13 years from now is still a long time away and any lease granted prior to the abolition will remain in force. Rent charges are therefore an area of law in respect of which legislative reform is long overdue and the need to protect rent payers from what amounts essentially to a particularly severe form of freehold forfeiture as a result of the relevant remedies provided by the 1925 Act is pressing.

We understand that the Minister in the Commons called this argument “reasonable” and implied that it could be revisited if the Government were able to consider the potential consequences of such a change, so I press the Minister that, if we are asked to withdraw our amendment today, she will at least consider whether the Government can deliver the effect we all want to see via a government amendment. We feel very strongly about this issue and I hope it will not be necessary to continue to press this point through to Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I wish to address the issue of forfeiture and support Amendment 55 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor of Stevenage and Lady Pinnock, and Amendment 95 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. I absolutely agree that leaseholders should not be subject to forfeiture in the case of a debt of a few hundred pounds or a temporary breach of covenant. Indebtedness can be dealt with by the county court and bailiffs. For that reason, I support Amendment 95 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. However— I know this may be controversial with some noble Lords—I am concerned that a blanket ban on forfeiture would remove an effective deterrent preventing some leaseholders persistently and wilfully breaching their leases by, for example, anti-social behaviour.

Let me give three practical examples I have come across in my years as a leaseholder. The first concerns a landlord who was letting out his flat on Airbnb, in breach of his lease. He knew he could make more money doing this than letting it on a long lease. As noble Lords know, Airbnb can cause a serious nuisance in blocks of permanent residents, due to excessive noise, wear and tear and lack of security impacting on quiet enjoyment. The landlord/leaseholder in question stopped only when threatened with forfeiture for breaching the lease.

The second involved a leaseholder putting a hot tub under a neighbour’s window, in clear breach of the lease, as only patio furniture was allowed to be displayed on the terrace, and threatening their quiet enjoyment. When challenged, their approach was dumb insolence. “What are you going to do about it?” was their approach. The threat of forfeiture ensured its removal.

The third example is more personal. My wife was attacked in our own garden by a neighbour’s tenant’s large dog, which was in a flat in breach of the lease. The gardens are open, with no boundaries, so dogs wandering around under no control are a problem. Let me be clear, I am a dog lover—I had two dogs as a child—but I am also conscious that there has been a massive increase in dog attacks in recent years. Official NHS figures reveal that, in the year to March 2023, there were 9,277 hospital admissions in which the patient had been bitten or struck by a dog. The number of people killed by dogs has also risen dramatically. In the last 20 years or so, the number of fatal dog bites has averaged about three per year; however, by 2022, it had risen to 10 fatalities and is still climbing. These cases are horrific and worrying.

Many blame the owners, not the dogs. Too many owners seem unwilling or unable to control their dogs and this behaviour is unfortunately widespread, as I have witnessed myself on a number of occasions. The dog in our block stayed, but when the leaseholder/landlord tried to introduce another tenant with another large dog, after the first attack, again in breach of the lease, it was only the threat of forfeiture that resolved the situation. Dogs may be appropriate in many surroundings, but in others they are excluded in leases for a reason.

Thus there are occasions when the mere threat of forfeiture, rarely used in practice, is useful to ensure compliance with lease obligations. Other legal routes can be extremely costly, lengthy and ineffective. So I ask the supporters of a complete ban on forfeiture how they propose to enforce compliance with leases and prevent breaches in the future if this proposal is carried.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I am not saying they are not positive. At the end of the day, to make progress we need a government amendment, or an amendment that somebody else tables that the Government will support, at the next stage. That is progress; that is what I am trying to push. I know the Minister is very generous with her time, and wants to get this right, and wants to meet colleagues. I am just trying to get it on the record, that is all. I know the Minister has been good every time that colleagues have raised this issue in the House, and I have a Question on it again on, I think, 22 May. I thank her very much.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for supporting these amendments and the noble Lords, Lord Truscott, Lord Kennedy and Lord Bailey, for their comments.

In relation to the Minister’s comments about the time it takes to do this, I repeat that the Conservative Party has had this in its manifesto since 2017, so there has been quite a lot of time to think this through and have a look at this. It is a bit disappointing that we are in Committee in the House of Lords with some of these key issues still unresolved.

I ask your Lordships to reflect on, first, the example I gave in the earlier debate, of the elderly couple who told me they have a dispute with their landlord and are being threatened with forfeiture. They potentially have a £15,000 bill for the costs. If they pay that charge it is taken as agreement, but failure to pay it means that the landlord can invoke forfeiture, so where do they go? That is an awful position to put people in.

My second example is a young lady who I was out with the other day doing our political work. She lives in a leasehold flat; she put a political poster up in her window and then, almost immediately, received a letter from the landlord threatening her with forfeiture because that breached the terms of her lease. That seems an onerous way of dealing with a relatively small issue.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, and he is right that there needs to be some form of resolution to this that means it does not need to go to the High Court—but it should certainly not be forfeiture, which is totally disproportionate. There may be a need to consider remedies other than the big sledgehammer of the High Court. Threatening to repossess people’s homes is certainly not an answer to technical breaches of lease.

Regarding rent charges, they will still be in place until 2037. We have to look at this and see whether we can find some way of getting rid of them before then.

As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, if we have to bring this amendment back again, we will, but I would rather the Government did so. That said, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 55 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

60: Clause 48, page 57, leave out from line 23 to line 23 on page 58
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would leave out the proposed new section 87B of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 and so ensure that RTM companies cannot incur costs in instances where claims cease.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, our amendment in this group refers to the fact that the Bill currently makes an exception to litigation costs being borne by landlords in the case where right-to-manage claims have been withdrawn or otherwise ceased early and the right-to-management company has acted unreasonably in bringing the right-to-management claim, allowing the landlord to apply to the tribunal for any reasonable costs.

The key arguments for the amendment are that, first, leaseholders should not be put at risk of having to pay costs simply for exercising statutory rights, in this case the right to seek to acquire and exercise rights in relation to the management of premises in which one has a leasehold interest. There is also concern that unscrupulous landlords might use the rights provided for in new Section 87B of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 as a means of recovering costs from right-to-manage companies that act reasonably and in good faith and, by implication, that it would discourage right-to-manage companies from initiating a claim because of the financial risk it still entails for individual participating leaseholders. Put simply, the fear is that new Section 87B will incentivise unscrupulous landlords to fight claims on the basis that they are defective in the hope of recovering costs by means of it. Our main concern regarding Clause 48 is that the use of the words “reasonable fee” and “reasonable costs” would not allow either of the above situations to occur. I ask the Minister: who will determine the definition of “reasonable”, and how?

I will comment on other amendments. We think that the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, are very reasonable, and we support his aims here. In fact, colleagues in the other place submitted similar amendments in Committee.

I also look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, introduce his amendments, which would incorporate local authorities and their properties, both within the HRA and without, but I ask whether he had discussions about this proposal with the Local Government Association or local authority stockholders. Most good local authority landlords already have substantial arrangements in place for liaison with leaseholders and tenants around the management of property, and there is certainly no issue with improving that through more effective right-to-manage arrangements. However, as much local authority property will be occupied by a mixture of local authority tenants and leaseholders, it would be important to ensure that there were no unintended consequences. I urge that that level of consultation takes place before any proposal such as this proceeds further. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, will forgive me if he has already done that consultation, but it was not clear from the amendments. With that, I beg to move Amendment 60.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak after the noble Baroness. I will come to answering her question. To give a blunt answer, I have not undertaken the consultation that she refers to, but I will explain when I get to that part of my introduction why I think that this stands on its own.

As I said at Second Reading, I strongly support those parts of the Bill which facilitate the exercise of the right to manage on the part of leaseholders in residential blocks. There are several measures in the Bill which do that. The right to manage is, in some ways, the crucial key to unlocking the levels of dissatisfaction which some leaseholders have with the way in which their blocks are managed. I strongly support it.

There is a particular issue which the Bill does not address. As a consequence of my general support for this—contrary to my remarks in earlier debates— I hope that the Government will give me a softer and more welcoming answer. As a result of my proposal, perhaps my noble friend on the Front Bench will even give me one of those answers which invites me to attend a meeting. In fact, I have had a meeting with my noble friend about this, though she may not recall it. We met last summer to discuss this issue with officials, and she was very sympathetic to it. That gives me additional reasons for thinking that this might be a welcome amendment.

The amendment arises from a particular case, but it raises questions of general importance. I shall refer to the case later, but I want to address the question of general importance first. When the right to manage was introduced through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, certain exceptions were placed on it. The Government intend to ease some of those restrictions, and I welcome that. One restriction was that the right to manage did not apply where the landlord of the building was a local housing authority.

I have tabled two alternative amendments—this is my point about consultation. Both amendments would reverse that assumption. One would eliminate it entirely. It would bring within the ambit of right to manage all blocks where the local housing authority was the landlord, including those within the housing revenue account. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, said that this could raise certain difficulties in cases where a block had so many long lease holders that it could exercise the right to manage but would be left with certain local authority tenants in the block. I have experience of local government, as does the noble Baroness. I recognise that she is correct in saying that there might be certain sensitivities about this. I think it could be managed. Indeed, it would be liberating for all the tenants of the block in many ways. The local authority tenants would also have a say in the management of the block. They would not be excluded from it simply because they were local authority tenants.

Recognising that this is a slightly daring proposition, I have suggested an alternative which would simply take out of the provision local housing authority-owned blocks where they were owned simply as an investment. I have left it vague as to whether that is a commercial investment or one held in the local authority’s pension fund. These are probing amendments. I should be happy to discuss these issues with my noble friend the Minister.

I come now to a particular case. There are blocks where local authorities have acquired property as an investment. Doing so immediately extinguishes the right of the long lease holders to exercise their right to manage—there are no local authority tenants. I think that is wrong. The case I am thinking of concerns a block acquired by a London local authority from a commercial property investment trust, bought at market value as an investment. The local authority, the new owner, was dissatisfied with the accounts inherited from the previous manager—it had their own manager for the block. As a result, it has not been able to put satisfactory accounts together for the last three years. As a consequence, it has not had the legal standing to issue invoices to its tenants for its service charges. It has been running the building’s operating costs out of the capital sums that had been set aside as a sinking fund to pay for future improvements to the building. It is all very unsatisfactory.

That is a classic situation in which long leaseholders would normally exercise the right to manage but, completely arbitrarily, are precluded from doing so. That is wrong. We should facilitate this.

At the very least, my noble friend should welcome my second amendment, Amendment 62, and say that where a local authority acquires a property for commercial purposes—not for the housing of its tenants but as an investment, either in its own name or as part of its pension fund—the right to manage would be restored. The financial interests of the local authority would be preserved, as they are under the current arrangements. It is simply that the right to manage the building would be taken over by the long leaseholders, as elsewhere, and they would manage it in just the same way as in all the other right-to-manage arrangements we are so much in favour of.

I will stop at that point because I have simply made my case, but this is a strange omission from the current arrangements, and one that we now have an opportunity to correct. I would be very happy to attend the meeting.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful, as ever, to the Minister for her responses. It seems she is going to be very busy over the next few weeks, having all these meetings with all of us. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for reminding me that, had the right reverend Prelate been here, I too would have objected strongly to the proposals he was making on Clause 47, because they would simply have opened the door to retaining the 25% limit, virtually across the property sector. I believe that would have gone against the intentions of the Bill, so she was right in what she said there and I thank her for her support for my amendment.

From this side of the House, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, that we welcome belligerent interventions from either side, but especially from the Benches opposite, so just keep going with those. We particularly agree with his Amendment 65B. If his meeting does not achieve the desired effect and he chooses to pursue this, he will certainly have our support.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, very much for his explanation. I had not realised that these were either/or amendments, but I understand his point about property owned as an investment by a local authority or pension fund. I agree with his point about the principle of right to manage being extended as far as possible. That is absolutely right, although anything affecting local authorities needs to have some consultation with the sector, because we just do not know what any unintended consequence of that might mean. I hope he will consider that if he chooses to pursue this amendment, but perhaps the meeting with the Minister might allay his concerns in that regard. That said, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 60 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sure the Minister understands that this has dragged on and on, and we are now at a very late stage of a Bill that has already gone all the way through the Commons. Quite frankly, the degree of uncertainty and instability that is being caused to leaseholders—and to freeholders, to be fair to them—is unacceptable. Yet again in this Chamber, we hear the phrase, “in due course”. I do not know what that means; it can mean anything from tomorrow to in three years’ time when we get round to sorting it out. That is not acceptable either.

We had a very detailed report from the Competition and Markets Authority, which roundly condemned the use of ground rents as a mechanism. We have heard in this Chamber over and again that this is money for nothing and that it has resulted in the most dreadful exploitation. The example I gave in Committee on Monday of an elderly couple virtually being held to ransom by the freeholder is absolutely shocking. That will be going on in millions of homes across the country. This is just not acceptable any longer. I hope that the Secretary of State will very rapidly make up his mind as to what he is going to do about this, stop being bulldozed by freeholder interests in his own party, make a decision and get rid of ground rents, once and for all. This would let people sleep easy in their beds, which they have not been able to do while this debate has been going on.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think there was a question there, and my response is that we went out, quite rightly, to consult, and the consultation did not finish until towards the end of January. This is a complex issue. If we do it badly or wrong then we will make mistakes and these people will potentially be in a more difficult situation. From the end of January to April is not a long time. We are doing it as fast as we can, and we will come back to the House with further details.