Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I, too, rise to support this very generous amendment from my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. It is pragmatic, and it would power up the Secretary of State, whoever that might be, to ensure that leaseholders are able to take control in hopefully larger numbers through extended enfranchisement. I hope the Minister will give the amendment very strong consideration.

[Rachel Maclean]

May I throw the general issue of collective enfranchisement into the mix? The Minister may wish to come back on it at a later point if it suits him better. Many people in this situation have raised with me the sheer practicalities and difficulties of doing a collective enfranchisement. When people live in a huge block of flats with vast numbers of flats, they do not necessarily know who the other people are and certainly do not have their contact details. That, in and of itself, presents a barrier and an obstacle for some of these claims. We have heard evidence from groups affected by this situation—most notably the Free Leaseholders group, but there are many others—who have made this point repeatedly.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Maclean]

Q That is really helpful, although it was not quite what I was trying to get at. If you are a freeholder, you may also be an insurer. A lot of big freeholders are insurers, and pension funds and so on, that are underwriting the pensions of many people in the country—in the NHS and so on. The claim that they have made is that in the past some of the leaseholders have bought out their freeholds. I might have slightly misunderstood the situation, but it has been put to me that, now that this flow of insurance is no longer coming to the insurers—or, to put it another way, now that the service charges and so on that are paid by the leaseholder to the freeholder are no longer coming to the insurance industry—that will somehow destabilise the insurers’ balance sheets and make them unable to meet their commitments. Is that something that you recognise, from your industry perspective? I am not talking about the individual leaseholder.

Matt Brewis: I do not believe that the size of the insurance part of the market is significant enough to destabilise any firms. I have not heard that claim before, but I do not think that this part of the market, in the types of firms that we are talking about, is of a size that would cause structural issues.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q In September, Sheldon Mills, an executive director at the FCA, issued a strong statement:

“Insurance firms must now act in leaseholders’ best interests and ensure that their policies provide fair value.”

Now I will give you a live case, which happens to be in a neighbouring constituency to mine. It is called The Decks. They have a remediation day and Taylor Wimpey has accepted responsibility, yet insurance premiums are going up again—poor value and high cost, as I think was cited in the review. New year was going to be a new broom to intervene and shape the market, yet you have got insurance companies like this, and many more up and down the country, laughing at people in this room—key stakeholders such as yourselves. What are you going to do? What powers have you got to intervene? Also, we have discussed insurance. Are clauses 31 to 33 in part 3 sufficient to deal with the issue?

Matt Brewis: Our new rules around ensuring that these products are fair value came into force on 31 December last year. The cost of insurance of multiple-occupancy buildings has increased, and our report of 2022 found that this was not an area where insurers were making significant profits, or super-profits, of any form because of a number of different parts—around fire safety risks, but more to do with some of the structural issues around the quality of the buildings and how they had been constructed. Escape of water was something that was causing significant losses in these buildings.

We found some of the biggest issues around the brokerage charges, which were increasing, and the payaways—payments that insurance brokers were making to property managing agents for services that they were apparently providing for them. So our new rules require them to be very clear what value they are providing and how they are doing that as brokers, as managing agents, and for that to be made clear to the leaseholders. We are undertaking reviews of those with a number of firms. This will provide leaseholders with more information so that they can challenge their freeholders, so that they can challenge the insurers and the brokers at a tribunal if necessary.

Where this Bill goes one step further is that although, as I have explained, we are not responsible for the managing agents or the freeholders, by effectively banning those payments of any commissions, as the Bill does in the clauses that you mention, it will go significantly further than I can with the powers that the FCA has to restrict the payments to other parties and therefore to reduce the cost to leaseholders. In my view, this is in line with the recommendations that we made in that report and results in a better product—a cheaper product—for leaseholders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

Q Thank you. I will ask a second question, if I may. You mentioned the issue of the pump room. Can you explain very briefly what the issue of the pump room is? Is this for a conversion or an enfranchisement claim? Where is the pump room issue coming into play?

Harry Scoffin: It is for mixed-use buildings that would otherwise benefit from the 25% non-residential premises limit going up to 50%. Let us say that you have an underground car park, a plant room or maybe, more recently, a heat network. Basically, because you are now linked, almost like Siamese twins, with a hotel, for example, or some shops, under the current 2002 Act for right to manage and even the 1993 Act for buying your freehold, you are out. So even though the Law Commission and the Government mean well, saying, “We’re going to liberate mixed-use leaseholders,” for many of those mixed-use leaseholders, where they are completely linked with the commercial, it is game over; you will never be able to qualify. That definitely needs to be revisited because the Government will not get any political benefit from moving, rightly, from 25% up to 50% and even to mandatory leasebacks for when you buy the commercial.

The quick argument—the Law Commission understood it—is that at the moment, the plant room will normally be managed, yes, by the hotel, but the freeholder for the flats will appoint a managing agent who will also have access to the plant room. We are not changing that position. The only difference is that the managing agent that the freeholder appointed, who has access to the plant room, would now be working directly for people like my mum. So it is not disrupting—we are not going to become hoteliers. We are not going to become shop owners. If we rely on a service and are paying for it—53%, mind—we should have access to it, but the key thing is that we need the right to manage. Without right to manage, or without buying the freehold, you are, literally, perpetually in this abusive relationship with a freeholder who has your cheque book and is spending it how he likes, whether that is reasonable or not. That is a fact.

On the point about section 24, that needs to be revisited so that the manager, where a tribunal deems it appropriate, can be the accountable person. In our building, we have mobilised—ironically, it is over 50% of the leaseholders. We now face going back to them—with their cash, by the way—and saying, “We can’t now get one because of this unintended consequence of the Building Safety Act”. That is a quick bit of drafting— I have spoken to lawyers about it. It would be very easy for you guys and that would help, particularly on cladding developments, where the cladding is not getting done because the freeholders are sitting on their hands. You need an officer of the court who is going to turn around the development and be accountable.

Karolina Zoltaniecka: Can I say something about the right to manage? At the moment, the process is so complex. There are three notices that need to be served. I believe there needs to be only one, to say to the freeholder, “We are taking over the right to manage and this is the date we are going to do it on”, and that is it. There are solicitors who specialise in analysing notices to pick holes in them to prolong the process, so that leaseholders give up, and costs just go up and up. And I completely agree with the forfeiture point from Harry. It is unnecessary and a breach of lease, and especially, arrears can be taken to the county court to recover if the arrears are real.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Is leasehold ownership home ownership?

Harry Scoffin: No, it is a tenancy scam. You do not own anything. You own the right to sell on a bit of space in a flat you occupy. You do not own, even though you may have paid a freehold price and you thought you owned it—you do not.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Maclean]

Sorry, I was looking at Mr Spender and I misspoke.

Liam Spender: I quite understand anyone being distracted by Mr O’Kelly. Thank you for the question. In our case to date, the freeholder has put £54,000 of its legal costs through the service charge. It did so in breach of a section 20C order, which is the current restriction that is supposed to prevent landlords from doing so. We complained and got most of that money back, but they have served something called a section 20B notice: they intend to recover the costs in the future if they prevail on appeal, by which point we could be looking at a substantial six-figure sum. This is all to do with us fighting to get back unreasonable service charges.

We are currently owed about £450,000—to give a round number—pending appeal. There is an appeal in April and I am carrying the burden of doing all that work myself. I quite understand why leaseholders without legal training give up and things will fall by the wayside. The system is very much stacked in landlords’ favour.

The cost provisions in the Bill are welcome. As you probably know, they changed the default so that the landlord has to ask for their costs. The issue is what has been created as a just and equitable jurisdiction; the tribunal can do what it thinks is fair in the circumstances. I believe—I think many people who have much more knowledge of this than I do would agree—that what that will mean in practice is probably that the tribunal will be inclined to give landlords their costs if they have won the case, so it will not change anything.

The other problem is that the first-tier tribunal considers itself a no-cost jurisdiction, and that is a generational way of thinking, so that has to be overcome and it has to get into the mindset of awarding costs to leaseholders and against landlords. Provisions could be included in the Bill that would make that that process easier—for example, prescribing a regime of fixed costs as applied to other low-value civil litigation. It is not a magic bullet, but I think that would be better than the current provisions in the Bill.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Is there anything else you would like in the Bill that is missing at the moment?

Sebastian O’Kelly: We would like to see a commitment to mandatory commonhold for new builds, frankly. How many more times are we going to try to reform the leasehold system? How many goes have we had at this since the 1960s? If you keep having to reform leasehold, is the answer not that it does not work? Why do you want this third-party investor—now, invariably, somebody offshore—hitching a ride on the value of somebody else’s home? It is a nonsense. One Duke of Westminster we can accept—the political continuity of our country maybe allows a freehold such as that—but we will create 1,000 of them with this. It is a nonsense. Bring it to an end and bring us in touch with the rest of the world—that is my statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

Q Do you agree with some of the arguments that are put forward by the freeholders lobby and organisations that abolishing ground rent will destabilise the pensions industry and mean that nurses and care workers and the good people who are toiling very hard in our public services will have their pensions destroyed? What do you say to that?

Jo Derbyshire: I think that is project fear. I work in pensions. I work in administration, not investments, but I sit on a lot of pension committees where we talk about the assets that pension schemes hold. They have investment strategies and they protect themselves from over-investing in one asset class. The amount of ground rents held by pension funds in this country would pale into insignificance compared with, for example, the impact of the mini-Budget and what happened with equities shortly after that. This is deliberate scaremongering.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q I have two brief questions. Are there any risks in terms of banning new leasehold houses but not flats? Why do you think this country is an outlier in the world and is so wedded still to this day to the feudal system of leasehold?

Katie Kendrick: You cannot just ban leasehold houses and not flats—70% of leaseholders live in flats, so you are not tackling the problem. You are cherry-picking the easy things, and banning leasehold houses is easy. It is more tricky with flats, but that does not mean it is not achievable. As you have said, it has been achieved everywhere else in the world. We do not need to continue to mask that leasehold system. It is deeply flawed and it ultimately needs to be abolished.

We do understand that there is no magic wand and this is not going to happen tomorrow, but there have been a lot of campaigners, well before us, who have highlighted the issues of leasehold, and yet here we are, still, again, trying to make it a little bit fairer. It does not need to be a little bit fairer—it needs to go. That needs to be the ultimate aim. Everybody needs to work on this. There is something better out there, despite what the other lobbying groups will tell you.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Can you tell the Committee about what is commonly known as “fleecehold”? Does this Bill in any way deal with aspects such as that?

Katie Kendrick: Our campaign coined the term fleecehold, and it has been used as a bit of an umbrella to describe all of the different ways that we can be ripped off through our homes. It first began because, when we were enfranchising and buying our freeholds, the freeholder was trying to retain all the same permission fees—such as permission to put on a conservatory or to paint the front door—in the transfer document. Ultimately, you could be a freeholder but still have to pay permission fees to the original freeholder.

That is where fleecehold came from, but fleecehold is now used as a much broader phrase because we have estate management charges. The new build estates all have estate management charges attached to them. They have replaced one income stream—leasehold—by creating another asset in the open green spaces. We all have lovely big open spaces and lovely parks, but it is the residents who pay for that. Again, it is a private management company that manages them. You have no transparency over what they are spending.

I can remember somebody ringing me up and saying, “Katie, I have a breakdown of my estate management charges and they are charging me such-and-such for a park, so I rang up and said, ‘You’re charging me.’ ‘Yes, Mr Such-and-Such. You have to pay for the upkeep of your park.’” And he went, “I understand that, but I haven’t got a park.” It is outrageous. It is great that they are going to give people more right to challenge the costs, which they do not currently have with their freeholders. They have fewer rights than leaseholders to challenge at tribunal. But ultimately why have we gone to a private estate model? Why are people paying double council tax? They are paying full council tax the same as anybody else is, yet they now have to pay thousands of pounds in estate management charges. It is a ticking timebomb.

The estates look very nice now, but in the future when the pavements are falling to pieces—I spoke to a police officer and things are not enforceable because they are classed as private. Speeding restrictions? You could have a boy racer running through the estate, but the police cannot enforce anything. The same with double yellow lines and things like that. It is a ticking timebomb, because new build estates are popping up all over the place with private management companies.

Jo Derbyshire: There are some things in the Bill that try to stop things. Typically on fleecehold estates there might be freehold houses, but the estate management charge is secured legally by something called a rent charge. What most people do not understand is that if they withhold their estate management fees, the property can be converted from freehold to leasehold. Again, that cannot be right.

[Rachel Maclean]

Q I just want to clarify your understanding of something that Mr Gardiner said earlier. I might need to put this to the Minister later, but Mr Gardiner said that if the new provisions on ground rent go through and ground rent goes to peppercorn or zero—I might be misquoting him.

Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend is completely right to raise the record—in his words, the shambolic record—of his local Labour-run council. What I can say to reassure him and other colleagues is that I have engaged with local authority leaders to explain to them exactly what this change means for them, what we expect them to do, and what they should be doing on behalf of their residents to make sure the money is spent properly to protect the rivers, seas and lakes, and get houses built.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that the only ones blocking the development of the houses that we need, including genuinely affordable social housing—a pitiful number were built last year; I think it was just over 7,000—are those on the Government Benches? It is the Tory Government who are the blockers of housing development to meet housing need. That is the case, is it not, Minister?

[Rachel Maclean]

It might sound very nice on the hon. Gentleman’s Facebook clip, but if he actually looks at the facts he will find it is Conservative-run councils that have, on the whole, delivered more houses over the last few years in responding to the needs of their constituents, and Labour-run councils that are experiencing significant failures in delivering the houses that their residents need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I agree entirely. I thank my hon. Friend for the excellent debate that he brought to Westminster Hall, in which we discussed these issues in detail. I am happy to reiterate to the House that we will legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to deal with many of the issues that he has raised that are affecting freehold homeowners.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that he had the noble aim of abolishing the feudal leasehold system. Could he update the House on his progress on the abolishment of that feudal system?

New Housing Supply

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, which I was just about to make.

The Government remain committed to our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes a year—homes fit for a new generation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden said. I agree with him: as a Conservative, I support a property-owning democracy, and despite the economic challenges of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and global inflation, we have made real progress towards that target. In 2021-22, more than 232,000 homes were delivered—the third highest yearly rate in the last 30 years. Since 2010, more than 2.3 million additional homes have been delivered. That is the achievement of a Conservative Government, and it is fantastic compared with the woeful record of the last Labour Government.

At the same time, we are not complacent about the scale of the challenges that have dogged England’s housing market for decades, as many hon. Members have mentioned: demand outstripping supply, local shortages and residents being priced out of the places they grew up in. That is why we have committed £10 billion of investment to increase housing supply since the start of this Parliament to unlock, ultimately, more than 1 million new homes.

Hon. Members will know how committed the Government are to the supply of affordable housing. I think every single hon. Member who spoke referred to that. That is why, through our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, we will deliver and are delivering tens of thousands of affordable homes for both sale and rent.

Moving on to the specific campaign or proposal from my right hon. Friend—

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

I will not at this point, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, because I have a lot to get on the record.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden has passionately advocated for new towns. We agree that an ambitious pipeline of housing and regeneration opportunities is crucial. I am a representative of a new town, Redditch, which currently houses about 70,000 people, so I know how successful and how important those developments can be. That is one of the reasons why we are already supporting delivery at scale along the lines he suggested through several funds, including the garden communities programme, which will support the delivery of more 3,000 homes by 2050, most of them in the north, the midlands and the south-west.

To pick out a couple of examples, Halsnead garden village in Knowsley will deliver more than 1,600 new homes in Merseyside, along with new businesses. Another, West Carclaze garden village, will support up to 1,500 new homes in an innovative and sustainable new community that promotes the health and wellbeing of its residents. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford noted the fantastic development in her local area, and I look forward to continued active discussions with her about the proposals in her Affordable Housing (Conversion of Commercial Property) Bill.

We must also work to unlock large complex sites through initiatives such as our housing infrastructure fund, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle has welcomed in his area. The fund delivers the infrastructure needed to ensure that new communities are well connected and supported by local amenities.

New towns, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden rightly asserted, can deliver high-quality, sustainable urban development and make an important contribution to housing supply. However, they require considerable resources and co-ordination, a long-term vision or masterplan, strong local support, enabling infrastructure and a significant capacity and capability commitment that is often beyond the abilities of local authorities.

For all those reasons, the Government believe that new towns can be part of the solution, but not the whole solution, to alleviate housing demand. They should be considered alongside regeneration opportunities to make the most efficient use of brownfield land and maximise the benefits of existing transport infrastructure. All our reforms are based on the principle that we will deliver housing only with the consent of communities and elected representatives at all levels. We know that wherever development takes place, local people will express the same concerns, so we have to get it right.

[Rachel Maclean]

My right hon. Friend will, I hope, hear the remarks about that later in my speech.

Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all the questions that are being asked, but I will touch on the importance of a healthy and diverse housing market, including the SME builders that were rightly mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South. We have launched the levelling up home building fund, which provides £1.5 billion in development finance to SMEs and modern methods of construction builders. Our Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill makes changes to the planning system to make it much easier for SMEs to operate.

Every Member has spoken about the importance of a modern, responsive and transparent planning system. I think it vital that our reformed planning system helps to bring certainty to communities and developers. That will enable them to take those positive steps towards building more housing, regenerating their local areas and supporting economic growth.

To address the point on which my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire challenged me, he will know that we have just concluded a consultation on the NPPF. A number of those policy questions are live and the Government will respond as quickly as possible to provide that certainty to the market and to local authorities. However, it is a huge consultation and it is important that we get it right.

[Mike Amesbury]

Does the Minister believe that building 35 first homes for first-time buyers is sufficient or ambitious?

[Rachel Maclean]

I am very proud of the Government’s record of building affordable homes and homes for young people.

I am aware that I need to conclude my remarks, so let me reiterate my huge thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. He is absolutely right to articulate so powerfully the case for driving up housing supply. That is our ambition—to build the homes that this country needs—and that is what this Conservative Government, working with Members on all sides of the House, will achieve.

Future of Social Housing

Debate between Mike Amesbury and Rachel Maclean

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Maclean]

The hon. Gentleman must be telepathic, because I was just about to come to that point. We are more broadly focused on accelerating housing delivery to make home buying a reality for a new generation, so we must build homes in the places that people want to live and work. As the Prime Minister said, and I agree with him, we want decisions about homes to be driven locally, which is why we need to get more local plans in place to deliver the homes that our communities need. We are working tirelessly across the country with our local partners and we intend to deliver 300,000 homes per year, as our commitment set out, so that we create a more sustainable and affordable housing market that benefits everybody.

However, I am not here only to talk about commitments, because it will make no difference unless we deliver on those commitments. We are making progress in our mission to increase housing supply and the numbers back that up. Many Members talked about numbers; let me give them some. Since 2010, we have delivered over 632,000 affordable homes, including 441,000 affordable homes for rent, over 162,000 of which were for social rent.

I hope that the hon. Member on the Opposition Front Bench, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), will forgive me for making the comparison, but it is worth noting that this Government have delivered more affordable homes in the last 12 years than were delivered in the preceding 13 years of a Labour Government. Actually, I note that the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) agrees with me. He said very clearly—

[Mike Amesbury]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rachel Maclean]

When I have finished this point, I will. The hon. Member for Stockton North said very clearly that the last Labour Government did not build enough social homes, either to rent or to buy, and I agree with him. [Interruption.] I will let the hon. Member for Weaver Vale intervene on me, but I want to answer his point. He has set out that he thinks a Labour Government are the answer to this situation; I disagree. A Labour Government are not the answer—the last Labour Government did not build enough affordable homes, social homes or council homes. If we look at Labour-run Wales, we see that they have an appalling record of building social housing.

Two London MPs spoke in the debate to highlight problems in London. I would like to remind—

[Rachel Maclean]

When I have finished my remarks. I would like to remind the House that the Mayor of London is responsible for housing in London. He is a Labour Mayor of London and the problems there lie firmly at his door.

Many Members have also spoken about councils. I would like to point out my own local council’s record. Conservative-run Redditch Borough Council is delivering council housing. That is happening now that the Conservatives are in control of the borough. When Labour was in control of Redditch Borough Council, it delivered precisely zero.

[Mike Amesbury]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

rose—

[Rachel Maclean]

I give way, first to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale, who first asked me to.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I should have welcomed her to her place, so I will get that on the record now.

This debate is about the future of social homes. I keep referring to that vandalised version of the definition of “affordable homes”; many of them are not affordable. On the track record of the previous Labour Government, let us compare social housing build. In those last few years of a Labour Government, considerably more social homes were built than under this Government—not enough, as hon. Members have said, but, going forward, the next Labour Government definitely will build enough.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank the hon. Member for his remarks. I listened carefully to the response of the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich on the Front Bench. What I heard is our agreement about the need to build more social homes to rent or buy, and Government Members also set that out very clearly. What I did not hear—from any Opposition Member—was a clear answer on how they will do that, so we await that.