Property Service Charges

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)]

The scandal of property service charges is one of the most unjust, indefensible and generally enraging issues facing my constituents. In many cases, the charges amount to little more than a form of parasitic exploitation of ordinary people by absentee landlords and businesses. It has been allowed to fester for far too long.

Across the country, 5 million people are trapped in a broken system that leaves them beholden to obscure, often overseas companies with a licence to cream off their hard-earned earnings with almost complete impunity. They have got away with it for years because leaseholders simply cannot effectively challenge this unfairness. As so often in Britain today, wealth is translated directly into power and ordinary people are left without any sense of agency over something as basic as their month to month finances.

The issue of unfair and arbitrary property service charges is impacting every corner of North East Hertfordshire, from Royston to Tewin and from Baldock to Buntingford. There are fleecehold estates where constituents have purchased a new build property under freehold conditions but found they are

“hostages to the whims and desires of service companies who can charge any amount of service fee they wish and without redress”,

making a mockery of the notion of freehold. There are housing association tenants paying eye-watering fees, yet left with neglected and inadequate services; residents in retirement accommodation facing extortionate maintenance costs that leave families struggling to pay care fees and trapped with properties that have little resale value; and leaseholders facing huge hikes in service charges by freeholders, yet seeing little evidence of the maintenance they are supposedly paying for. One constituent put the experience plainly:

“They are committing service charge abuse”

and

“they are making people’s lives miserable.”

I have previously criticised privatised water companies and housing developers for raking in vast profits despite substandard delivery, but in many ways they pale in comparison with the sheer audacity of the leasehold scandal.

These are issues rooted in feudal concepts of property ownership, and those trapped paying these fees, with next to no ability to challenge or escape them, are in effect still suffering from a form of economic serfdom where those with the right title deeds can levy private taxes on ordinary people that bear practically no relation to services rendered. Nearly 1,000 years after William’s conquest, I think the English have suffered under this Norman yoke quite enough.

The Government’s own Competition and Markets Authority found

“no persuasive evidence that consumers receive anything in return”

for the ground rents they pay. In communities like Letchworth, that rings painfully true. We should all welcome the Government’s recent victory in the High Court over wealthy private interests who threw millions at trying to block vital reforms. I also welcome Ministers’ commitment to finishing the job of reforming leasehold. I look forward to supporting further steps to end this scandal once and for all.

The solution is clear: municipal estate ownership and the ability to move to commonhold as quickly as is reasonably possible. Home ownership should mean owning the bricks and mortar and should come with a sense of freedom, not exposure to exploitation. No one should be left behind as we put this injustice to bed.

I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the broader campaign for a charter of community empowerment. Many of its principles are relevant to the debate. If the Government are to achieve that historic Labour mission of redistributing not just wealth but power into the hands of the majority, in today’s context that must mean trusting that ordinary people are more capable of upkeeping their own estates and managing their homes fairly than offshore firms or the landowning aristocracy.

For once, I will not rain down a series of detailed demands on the Minister, as I know he faces a complex legal situation left by the previous Administration. Today I want only to urge him to cut this Gordian knot in this Parliament and give my constituents a straight- forward way out of being forever tied to service fees by unaccountable companies. The economic benefits to our high streets, which are desperately needed in villages and market towns such as those I represent, would be enormous, as thousands of families across the country found their disposable income no longer slashed every month by charges that cannot be justified.

The resistance that the Government have faced from the freehold lobby, clinging desperately to their ill-gotten gains and the sacred right to turn hard-working people into cash cows, should only renew our sense of urgency. I am sure that we will see more appeals and outcry from vested interests—the Government should know the Labour party and millions outside this place are united behind them.

After the High Court’s ruling, the Residential Freehold Association warned that the decision

“opens the door for Government to intervene in markets far beyond the leasehold sector”—

in other words, the terrible spectre that democracy may be empowered to secure the public good before private profit. As my constituents lose out in an economy rigged against ordinary people—one that rewards wealthy property owners and unearned income rather than those who go out and work for a living—I say, quite simply: I hope it is right.