Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Bailey of Paddington

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, and I have added my name to his amendments.

There is a great deal that I could say on this issue but, since I said most of it in the debate on the last group, I shall keep my remarks fairly short. I can add a little personal knowledge of one charity to which the right reverend Prelate refers, because it is very Kensington-based. I have no connection with it and no interest to declare—but Campden Charities was started in the 17th century by Count Campden, a devout Puritan. When he died, he left a charitable endowment, naturally in the shape of land that he owned, for the benefit of the poor youth of Kensington. His widow, when she died, did likewise with her property—hence the plural. It is Campden Charities: technically, they are two separate endowments, but they are run as one. They own land in Kensington to this day from which they have an income, and they continue to support the poor youth of Kensington—and there are poor youths in Kensington—giving them grants to allow them to continue their education and apprenticeships, and work of that sort. Their income is now going to be, to some extent by this measure, reduced and expropriated.

As I say, apparently as Conservatives we feel no embarrassment in doing this—we feel no constraint on us. We are too tender and too ginger to feel that we can expropriate the assets of ill-doers such as Putin’s friends—they are sacrosanct. But those who do good, such as charities, can have their money taken away with very little debate and handed to leaseholders who may or may not be poor and meritorious. Who knows? What is it next, I wonder, for my noble friends on the Front Bench? Shall we be stealing the widow’s mite from the poor box?

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I want to pay tribute to Campden Charities, as I am a beneficiary of the activities of Campden Charities. I came from a community where the likelihood of one of us appearing in the Lords was next to zero, and Campden Charities is an important part of my arrival in your Lordships’ House. I point out that removing the ability of charities countrywide to provide such services would be devastating to some of the poorest communities in this country. Again, I stand here as a witness to the effectiveness of some of the work that they do.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Bailey of Paddington

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 65A and 65B. The Government should be applauded for their ambitions as laid out in the Bill. Let us hope that we can achieve them all. I put on record that I am pleased with the Government’s direction of travel, because some of my interventions up until now may have seemed slightly belligerent, but can my noble friend the Minister provide some reassurance around the Government’s stated aim of a revolution in the right to manage? That would help to address what, for me, is at the heart of what I consider the leasehold scandal, which is really about control. Leaseholders in England and Wales are unique in the lack of control that they have. Worldwide, leaseholders and those with commonhold and many other types of tenure have much more control. I believe that is something the Bill can address, and the Government have to demonstrate that they want to deliver on it. Indeed, it was our own Secretary of State who said that he wants to see a revolution in the right to manage.

I put on record my colleagues Nickie Aiken and Barry Gardiner, who brought a very similar amendment in the other place. Amendment 65A seeks to ensure that leaseholders in mixed-use property who would otherwise qualify for the right to manage because 50% or more of the floorspace is residential, but because of a technicality—a boiler or an underground car park—are prevented from having that management given to them, still have that right. The current test means that you have to demonstrate that your building is self-contained or that the residential part is partly self-contained, but the layout of the building might suggest that it is not self-contained due to an underground car park or boiler room, when actually it is.

The Law Commission saw these two tests as too strict. It suggested that a third test could be set whereby, if it could be demonstrated that people are reasonably capable of managing the residential area fully independently, they should be given access to this power. As I have stated in most of the debate, the thing that most drives me is the potential for the abuse of service charging. Giving residents control over their assets is clearly the answer to that.

The amendment does not mean that leaseholders can take over the management of shops, hotels or commercial premises. That is not the idea of the amendment. The right to manage applies exclusively to the residential parts, such as corridors and lift lobbies —parts of the building used only by residents. The amendment does not seek to change that position.

At Second Reading, I made the point that even the leading freeholder lobby group pointed out that free- holders own, at best, only 2.5% of the capital interest in the buildings they have the freehold of. That leads me to my other amendment, Amendment 65B. We must lower the threshold at which a group of people can take over the management of that lease. It is currently at 50%. I suggest that it should be at around 35%—again, to help the Government achieve their stated aim of a revolution in right to manage.