Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Young of Cookham

Report stage & 3rd reading
Friday 24th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to press my noble friend on Amendment 1. The Bill bans new houses being sold on leasehold, which is something I entirely support. Schedule 1 provides a rather narrow range of exemptions and Amendment 1 refers to retirement housing.

I raised in Committee a product called Homes for Life, which looks as if it may be caught by this Bill. Basically, Homes for Life enables someone who is over 60 to sell their home on the open market, then Homes for Life buys the home they want to move to and gives them a lease on that home. That enables the person to downsize and releases a useful sum of money for them. However, that product is not at the moment exempted under Schedule 1. When the Government consulted on implementing reforms to the leasehold system they concluded:

“We will provide an exemption from the ban for these financial products”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/4/24; col. 1271.]


That included this one. I was in correspondence with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about this. Can my noble friend give an assurance that that product, which is useful and non-controversial, will not be banned by the Bill when it becomes an Act?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, before I go further, I declare that I am a long leaseholder in a property which is my home and that I have no other property interests, apart from as a will trustee of one flat in London in which I have no beneficial interest, simply a nominal interest on behalf of the beneficiary of the will during his lifetime.

I shall respond in particular to Amendments 55 and 58 among the government amendments, because they address a point that I have raised. I am slightly surprised that my noble friend on the Front Bench did not seek to draw my attention to this fact. It is a point that I raised in Committee and on which I have a related amendment later in the list, which we will no doubt come to—but if I address it now, I can be briefer when we come to that group later on.

The matter relates in particular to the question that I raised in Committee about the ability of landlords to recover legal costs from the service charge and, in particular, how this would work for right-to-manage companies. I should have declared that in the block where I live we have a right-to-manage company, and I am a member and a director of that company. How would this ban relate to right-to-manage companies that have no other source of income apart from the service charge? Before these amendments were brought forward, the Bill would have made it virtually impossible for a right-to-manage company to bring legal action against, for example, a defaulter or someone who failed to pay, because they would have no assurance in advance that they would be able to recover their legal costs. The directors would be exposed to having to pay the legal costs out of their own pockets—quite apart from the fact that most lawyers like a little bit of money upfront anyway in order to commence proceedings, so that would need to be funded from the private pockets of the directors of the company. My amendment later also raises this question in relation to other types of non-profit landlord or building managers who have no financial interest in the building other than in their role as manager.

The Government’s response—and here I am making the speech I was expecting my noble friend to make in relation to these two amendments—appears to be that the Secretary of State will make regulations subject to the affirmative procedure to provide for circumstances where the new proposed regime on litigation costs and administration charges will not apply or is suspended.

This appears to be something of a concession in the direction of the point I raised in Committee and have on the amendment paper later. But the drafting and Explanatory Notes provide no guidance on when such regulations will be made or what the intention is behind such exemptions. It is worth saying here that the amendments provide that the circumstances on which the exceptions may be based include not only the litigation costs but the relevant proceedings and the landlord of a specified description. As I say, this could be beneficial for freeholders in the circumstances I described, but it depends very much on the content of the regulations.

I would like to ask my noble friend some questions. We are in the very strange position that I am asking him to give a commitment when, subject to the will of the electorate, he may not be a member of the Government and the Government on behalf of whom he speaks may not be in power. I say nothing to anticipate what the result may be, but of course the electorate may choose a Government of a different party. I will none the less ask him these questions and, in some ways, I would be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, might find it possible to give his own answer to these questions.

The first question is: what types of litigation costs, proceedings or landlords do the Government intend to be excepted from the general rule? I am sorry, normally I am better prepared, but of course very few of us are well prepared for dealing with this Bill because it has been added so late to the agenda. I suspect my noble friend on the Front Bench is in that category as well, from the turn of the head I noticed on his part just now.

Could these exceptions also extend to certain categories of leaseholders, for example investor leaseholders who might benefit from the general rule? Crucially, within what timeframe will such regulations be made? There is of course no commitment to timeframes in the amendments that have been made. The difficulty is that directors of right-to-manage companies and others are being left in a sort of limbo between the passing of this Bill and the coming into effect of the regulations.

One must also bear in mind that directors of right-to-manage companies and similar landlords may be the subject of legal action. Their ability to recover their own legal costs in defending such actions is also a question that needs to be resolved—and clearly resolved. If people such as me are going to continue as directors of right-to-manage companies, they will potentially find themselves exposed to that sort of risk.

So, as far as these two amendments go, I welcome their general direction. I find it deeply unsatisfactory that we are having to rely on the promise of a Secretary of State who may not be in office in six weeks. I would prefer my own approach, later on the Marshalled List, of putting these provisions on the face of the Bill. I seek a very clear response from my noble friend so that the many people in this country who have pursued right-to-manage, which is a policy the Government support and wish to extend—and I wholly support them in that—are not left adrift by ill thought out drafting in this Bill.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Moylan and Lord Young of Cookham

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in this debate. There have been a lot of Youngs involved, and I will try to respond on behalf of both of them. Let me say straightaway that I very much welcome the government amendment, and I am sure that, in her absence, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, would also do so.

On the rest of it, I had hoped that, with this group of amendments, we might have found a chink in the Government’s armour that has been deployed throughout our debates. I am disappointed that we have not been able to make progress, and I know that the Local Government Association will also be disappointed.

I am grateful to all those who took part. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made the valid point that the flat rate prescribed by the Government simply does not reflect the costs to a local authority of a complex planning application that spans a number of years; that point was not adequately dealt with.

I was most concerned to hear what my noble friend Lord Moylan said about developers offering to second to an overstretched planning department a planner who might assist them. That is rather like me saying to Test Valley Borough Council, “I understand your electoral department is under some pressure; I would like to second a returning officer to the forthcoming election”.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

If my noble friend will allow me to say so, I did not suggest that they were offering to second somebody but to fund a planning officer who would be recruited from the pool of available planning officers.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. None the less, the principle that he ended his speech with is still valid: a local authority should not be dependent on the good will of a developer to process that developer’s planning application. That goes against most of the codes of independence for local government.

In response to my amendment, my noble friend the Minister said that she could not accept it because of the uncertainty that might confront developers and the costs might be too high. But the charge under my amendment could only reflect the costs. A local authority could not charge a fee as a deterrent if it was not substantiated by the underlying cost.

As for uncertainty, what developers, housebuilders and any planning applicant want is for their application to be processed promptly and efficiently by a well-resourced planning department. That is their priority. I do not think that uncertainty about future fees comes into it, or it is right down their list of priorities.

Also, I do not see how this central control of planning fees sits with the whole language of the Bill, which is about empowering local authorities and giving them more autonomy to reflect local needs. It appears that, despite all that, we cannot trust them to set planning fees. I think the Government’s stance on this group of amendments sits uneasily with their whole philosophy, but, while I reflect on what to do next, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.