New Homes: Developers, Housebuilders and Management Companies

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Let us begin the first parliamentary sitting of the new year by wishing everyone a happy new year. As is now tradition before all our sittings, I remind all hon. Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. I am also asked to remind everyone to get a lateral flow test—provided, of course, that you can get one—at least twice a week, before coming on to the parliamentary estate. These can be done at the testing centre here as well. Welcome, everyone.

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of developers, housebuilders and management companies in new homes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. Happy new year to you and to everybody else who is here this morning. This is a 90-minute debate, and I have said to quite a number of people that I could easily speak for at least 90 minutes on this topic—it will be a relief to everyone that I am not going to do that. The reason is that it is a source of huge frustration in my constituency. Owning a new home and the development of new homes should be a source of great joy, but too often it is a source of great distress. There are a few reasons for that that I want to talk about, but before I go into those, I want to say at the outset that, contrary to some of the media stereotypes about areas such as mine, most people in my constituency are not opposed to new homes. If they are homeowners themselves, they entirely understand why other people want to own a home. They often have children and grandchildren whom they are trying to help get on the housing ladder. They know that we need housing for key workers. They know that sometimes people just want to move into one of these new homes from where they already live in the constituency. But people have real frustration with the way in which these things are developing and the problems they are causing in the local area.

The first issue is simply the quality of a lot of the homes that go up, because it is often poor. Sometimes it is very good, but too often it is poor, and constituents’ homes have major defects that take years to try to deal with. I have constituents who have spent two, three or four years—sometimes more—trying to get these defects repaired. This is not like buying a cheap version of something on eBay, half-expecting that there might be something wrong with it. This is the biggest purchase that any of us will make, and we do not expect to then have years of trying to sort out the problems with it. Unfortunately, when constituents try to do that, they feel completely outmatched by the builder that built their home. Sometimes the builder will blame the contractor; sometimes they will say that there is nothing wrong: “We signed it off according to building regulations.” But I have been in some of these places and we can see these huge issues. It is completely unacceptable that people are experiencing them.

The second issue is about the impact of these homes on the environment. That has two major aspects to it. One is what it does to the local environment around the area. Naturally, people can see greenfield sites disappearing. One constituent wrote to me and said that the biodiversity commitments that a particular house builder had made had not been kept whatsoever. There is an impact on air quality and water quality, but the other aspect is how the homes themselves are built. I am continually asked by constituents, “Why are we building so many homes that we know we will have to retrofit in a few years’ time?”, and there is no easy answer to that. I am continually asked, “Why can’t every new home have solar panels? Why can’t every new home have a heat pump?” I understand why: there are various reasons why we might not put the same thing in every kind of house.

I completely welcome the Government’s commitment to having electric charging points in every new home. I really welcome the future homes standard, which will make new homes from 2025 net zero ready, with a 75% reduction in their emissions. But the point still stands that thousands of homes are going up right now and we know that because of our ambitious net zero goals, we will have to retrofit a lot of them. The reason is that it is cheaper for the house builders to build them that way today.

The third issue is affordability. I have said a few times in this place that no one who rents has ever said to me, “There are too many new homes going up.” They say only that those homes are not affordable. They say that they have saved for years and years, and it does not matter how much they save; they do not get close to being able to afford one. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. To London ears that might sound fine, but it is 9.2 times median income, and that is out of reach for most people. An affordability threshold of 80% of that is still not affordable. Again, we run into bad practices. We all know that developers commit to a certain number of affordable homes, but time after time that number is driven down on the grounds that the development would not be viable if that commitment were maintained, so broken promises are a constant theme.

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[David Johnston]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I expect the Minister will address that point when he speaks later. Most people think that they own their home, but they can often end up feeling like tenants. I experienced that myself until recently. I used to get a bill for £300 on Christmas day every year. The bill, dated 25 December, was £300 for absolutely nothing, but constituents of mine are in a much worse situation.

The fifth aspect I want to talk about is the overall broken system in which the process operates. I do not blame the Government entirely. Councils have some responsibilities: One is if they do not enforce the planning conditions when developers go above the assessed numbers that they are supposed to build. Another is if they allow the same application to be made over and over again, when they could refuse it after two tries. They do not take a bigger-picture view. There are villages in my constituency, such as Sutton Courtenay, that feel hugely overdeveloped because individual applications are all being approved and nobody is looking at what is happening to the whole area and why it might not be a good idea to keep approving those applications.

Ultimately, these companies have to be held accountable for their behaviour. They apply for sites that they know the local plan does not allow them to apply for, as is happening in Grove, in my constituency. They continually try to build on flood plains. They continually fail to adhere to their section 106 agreements and community infrastructure levy agreements—sometimes not building infrastructure at all, and sometimes building pointless things, such as a pathway that goes only halfway across an estate or a bike path that leads to nowhere, just so they can say that they have done it. All those things are going on with new developments in my constituency. I do not blame Government for it all, but it is the Government’s job to ensure that the system does not operate in that way.

If I had to sum up the problems in my constituency, it would be, “Too many homes, too little infrastructure.” The two district councils that my constituency covers are, relative to their size, in the top 10 areas for house building in the country, yet they are in the bottom third for infrastructure spending. That is a huge bugbear. To put that in numerical context, an estimate of the population change between 2017 and 2027 found that the largest town and surrounding area in my constituency, Didcot, will increase from 36,000 to 51,000. The second largest area, Wantage and Grove, will increase from 17,000 to 27,000—that is in a 10-year period. Faringdon is getting thousands more people, and Wallingford is getting thousands more.

The infrastructure is not following that. It is harder to get a GP appointment, the roads in the constituency get more and more congested and it is harder to get a school place. One village has a 220-child school, and 300 houses have been built right next to it; just last year, the catchment area became less than 470 metres. People who have lived there for a long time and who expected their children to go to that school now cannot get in. When my constituents hear that planning reform may mean new houses and that they will not be able to oppose them, or that the Oxford-Cambridge arc may mean more houses, or that the council leaders’ Oxfordshire 2050 plan may lead to more houses, they are not concerned out of nimbyism; they are concerned because of their experience, over many years, of so many houses being built and so many promises being broken.

To conclude, I will talk about a few things that I think should happen. There are lots of things, and there are plenty of experts in this room who I know will talk about other aspects. First, we need a much tougher regime for the quality of new buildings. I know that the new homes ombudsman will deal with some of these issues, but it is completely unacceptable to pay that much money and have that many problems. We need very tight quality conditions, and the threshold needs to be raised. If it is not met within a certain timeframe, there should be penalties; issues must not go on for years.

Secondly, we need “use it or lose it” planning permissions. I know that there are debates about how best to do this, and I am frequently written to about the 1 million permissions that have not been built on. I know that there is a debate about land banking and whether it happens; hon. Members would be hard pressed to persuade me that it does not, at least from the developers’ point of view. We in this place are familiar with the phrase “dig a trench.” The emphasis has been on starting the building: companies dig a trench to suggest that they have started building, and the houses then take years to appear. We need these homes to be completed within a certain period. If they are not, taxes might be levied or fines paid, but I think that the permission should be lost entirely.

Thirdly, I want to talk about environmental standards. If it takes several years for these houses to be built, they should be built to the latest environmental standards, not to those that existed when the developers got permission. That is what is happening at the moment: companies are building houses to an environmental standard of several years ago, when they should be building to a standard of the future. That needs to change.

We have got to make developers and house builders commit to their affordability criteria. Our big house builders are doing completely fine for profits for their own viability, so they cannot keep saying that developments would not be viable if they committed to what they originally promised.

When it comes to management companies, we need a much stricter regime, because the current one is very murky. Companies are getting away with appalling practices, bullying residents into things and fleecing them, year after year, for things that are not being provided. We need a tougher regime under which companies cannot keep hiking charges without an extraordinary set of circumstances. The charges often go up because of things the company itself has done and got wrong, and it passes the cost on to residents who had no say in the first place. Much more transparency is needed, and penalties for such bad behaviour.

I understand that house builders want a level playing field, because an individual company does not want to commit to expensive things if its rivals are not doing so. That is where there is a role for Government in raising standards, so that all house builders have to do the same. I want more of a level playing field for smaller companies, such as Greencore Construction in my constituency. Many such companies are more environmentally friendly and more efficient, and produce higher-quality homes, but they are often outbid by the financial muscle of the big boys. Perhaps we need to reserve a greater proportion of development sites for such companies or give them greater access to capital. I am all in favour of smaller organisations rather than larger ones—I ran small charities, not larger ones. I think we can get a better product from smaller house builders, and we need to help more such companies into the market.

My final point is that infrastructure needs to go in first. It is not right to pile more and more houses and people into an area, but to do nothing to support local services and infrastructure. I have been campaigning for Grove station to be reopened, for improvements on our roads and for better medical facilities. GP surgeries are bursting at the seams because thousands more people have been added to the area—Members have heard the numbers. GP surgeries and school places have not been added along with the people. Infrastructure must go in first. Unfortunately, over decades my constituents have been told too many times that the infrastructure will come with the houses, but it never has, and now they do not believe it. That has to come first. As part of that, we might better capture the land value increase that comes with planning permission. At the moment, the increase all goes to the owner. Some of it ought to go to the local community who will live with the new houses, not to the landowner who has sold the land.

The balance of power is wrong. Management companies, house builders and developers have too much power, and local residents have too little. The Government cannot be blamed for every single thing that a private company does, but they can help to restore the balance, so that local communities do not see new houses as a curse on the area they used to love.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

There are eight colleagues wishing to speak in the debate, and I want to start the winding-up speeches just before 10.40 am. That gives us just under an hour, which is six or seven minutes per person. I will not put a formal guideline on speeches, but I ask that people comply with that time limit.

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[Theresa Villiers]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There are certainly aspects of the Northern Ireland planning system that we could usefully learn from, but it has its drawbacks as well. However, I feel strongly that developer contributions should be ring-fenced for the local communities that are directly affected by the new homes. Too often—certainly in England—such contributions end up being distributed to a broader area and those who bear the burden of the new development do not necessarily get the benefit of the developer contributions.

We should use home building as a core part of efforts to regenerate cities and communities in the north and midlands. Many of those areas have seen population declines over the past 50 years, but new housing and infrastructure could help to reverse that trend.

We also need to address land banking. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage proposed, we could introduce a “use it or lose it” rule for land-banked permissions. An agreed start-by date could be imposed and permission could be withdrawn if that deadline was not met, and “start-by” should mean significant initial works and not digging a few holes or a trench. We could also impose end-by dates, after which council tax is payable on every home that is planned, regardless of whether it has been built or not. There is also a case for introducing a rule to limit the number of applications that can be made in relation to the same site, which would bring to an end the exasperating practice of developers coming back again and again, with multiple applications being turned down, which effectively turns the planning process into a war of attrition with planners and local residents.

There is a strong case for a character test in planning, so that if people have a poor track record in development or there are other reasons to doubt their ability to deliver, they can be blocked at the planning stage. I believe that sites that have been illegally prepared for building—for example, where tree felling has taken place illegally—should be made ineligible for future planning applications, and I would certainly like to see the penalties increase for illegal tree felling by developers.

Lastly, we could provide tax incentives for elderly homeowners to downsize, for example by reducing stamp duty.

As the Secretary of State contemplates which reforms to take forward and which to reject, I hope that he will listen carefully to the concerns that have been expressed in this debate. We must not let our rush for new homes compromise our environmental commitments or destroy our green and pleasant land, and we must not repeat the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s, when poor quality high-rise housing blighted the lives of millions of people.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I must emphasise that speeches should last for no more than six minutes, please. Otherwise, other Members will not get as much time in which to speak.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

A very happy new year to you, Mr Betts. As we have limited time, I will make three points. First, I have served as an MP for over 20 years, and the whole issue of housing development and the associated infrastructure remains the most controversial issue in my constituency. One of the things I have learned from that is that in order to be accepted by local people, development must be done with people, rather than to people, but the major house builders rarely seem to understand that.

The legislative framework within which the house building industry has to operate is obviously fundamental, but we are still awaiting the publication of the Government’s much-delayed planning Bill. That has led to the iniquitous situation whereby the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities continues to harry local authorities to finalise their local plans, despite holding back legislation that, once enacted, might mean that local councils have to revise or even substantially rewrite the plans that many of them have just spent literally years working on. It is becoming a bit like “Waiting for Godot”. To put it another way, the Department should remove the plank from its own eye. I humbly ask the Minister: when can we expect the publication of the planning Bill, and when is Second Reading likely to be?

Secondly, the UK housing market is now effectively an example of near market failure. It is completely dominated by half a dozen or so major house builders, some of whom have grown over the years by absorbing competitors. That restricts choice, and, even more importantly, artificially restricts housing supply. That is done deliberately to keep prices up. Liam Halligan, economics editor of the Sunday Telegraph and now a popular TV presenter, explored the problem in great detail in his very good 2019 book, “Home Truths: The UK's chronic housing shortage”, in which he exposes the adverse effects of the dominance of the volume house builders on the housing market.

For instance, as Liam Halligan points out, since the Office of Fair Trading’s investigation into the housing sector in 2008, the market share of the volume house builders has more than doubled, from 31% to 59%—not far off two thirds of the entire market. Covid is likely to have made that serious market anomaly worse by increasing the pressure on smaller builders, many of whom have limited financial reserves.

As Liam Halligan argues,

“An oligopolistic house building sector, deliberately restricting the supply of new homes to keep profits high, is anathema to free markets.”

But it is even worse than that. The paradigm that the Government appear to be working in is one where house building is held back by nimby local authorities, despite the best efforts of house builders to build new homes. In fact, the reverse is true. As the Local Government Association pointed out in February 2020, there are over 1 million extant planning permissions for new properties, but these have not been built out. In October 2020, the Campaign to Protect Rural England produced a report highlighting that over half a million of these plots alone are on brownfield sites. A former chief executive of Persimmon Homes stood down after getting his £75 million bonus—a bonus so profane that it embarrassed not just his company but the rest of the industry. Perhaps he was untroubled by these facts. Nevertheless, some of the practices we have heard about from colleagues this morning still go on. Where, one has to ask, are Ministers—and, indeed, the Competition and Markets Authority—in all of this?

I come to my third point. Let me give a practical example of how truly arrogant some of these companies have become. Bloor Homes, one of the largest privately owned developers in Britain, was so desperate to secure planning permission for a highly controversial site off Ashingdon Road in my constituency that it resorted to trying to interfere with the composition of the development control committee of Rochford District Council, which was due to consider the application last June. Bloor having lost—the committee turned it down—Bloor’s political consultant sent a series of highly intemperate, even offensive, texts late at night to the leader of the council. It is the sheer arrogance of these tactics, which I have not previously encountered in over 30 years of public life as a councillor and then as an MP, that I find deeply shocking. This is the sad reality of house building in Britain today. We have limited time, Mr Betts, so I will not read all the communications into the record. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to do on Second Reading of the planning Bill, so that Ministers, parliamentary colleagues, the media and others in the house building industry can learn how Bloor Homes really behaves.

In summary, the UK house building sector is deeply troubled, bordering on dysfunctional. Many ordinary families are struggling to buy a home, while some of the major house builders ruthlessly exploit their agony to maintain their already generous profit margins. They blame everyone but themselves: Government, MPs, local authorities or concerned local residents—anyone but the greedy companies that are at the heart of the problem. If Ministers really want to boost housing supply, let us have a full inquiry by the Competition and Markets Authority on over-concentration in the UK house building industry, and let us have it now.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

As I want to call the Front-Bench speakers at 10.38 am, the last two speakers will have five minutes each.

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[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. May I wish all Members a happy new year and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) for securing this important debate? The debate is important because it allows us to discuss the role that house builders play not just before houses are built, but when ensuring that homes are fit for purpose once they are finished.

Buying a home is probably the most important and expensive purchase that any of us will make. With that in mind, I wish to raise the case of a specific development within my constituency, the High Banks development in Silsden, which sadly has witnessed mismanagement by its construction company, Harron Homes. It is perfect timing that I am following the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who spent most of her speech talking about Harron Homes, as I intend to do the same. The High Banks development was constructed and finished back in 2020, and it consists of about 50 properties. I have been contacted by the residents about this. Indeed, the local councillor, Rebecca Whittaker, who represents the Craven ward, has been contacted by about 30 of the 50 residents.

The manner in which the High Banks development has been finished and the snagging issues are, quite frankly, shocking. I have visited the site many times. As soon as I arrived, it became quite clear why residents have contacted me and Councillor Whitaker. The road is in a shocking state. The sewerage system is still not connected to the mains, and a tanker comes in on a weekly basis to empty the development’s tanks. Many house owners have contacted me about cracks in their walls appearing, plumbing systems in their houses not being connected or finished, floorboards creaking, gardens not being properly landscaped or finished, and boundary fences not being finished. This situation is not satisfactory at all. One constituent told me that they had waited so long for many of these issues to be sorted that they carried out the work themselves, only for the developer to say, “You finished it; we’re not coming in to sort it out.” That is not good enough.

I know that High Banks is not the only Harron Homes development to face these issues. The hon. Member for Halifax already raised her case, and I know that there are similar cases in Dewsbury and Colne Valley. Communication is a big concern with this particular developer. On the back of constituents raising these concerns with me, I tried to have a meeting with the managing director. I requested the meeting in the summer of last year, and we were able to secure a meeting with him on site only in October.

Harron Homes promised to keep up communications with many of its residents. Indeed, on the back of a meeting with Tony Lee, the managing director, and Andy Hall, the construction director, I was promised six-weekly updates. I have not received any update since the meeting with them in October, and the residents have received only one communication. Again, that is not good enough. As a result, I continue to receive correspondence from constituents in High Banks saying that Harron Homes has done absolutely nothing—since I met them or, indeed, since 2020, when it finished the development—to improve the site.

The company has not kept its promises to those who bought their homes. Where do we go from here? I call on Harron Homes again to respect its contractual relationship with its purchasers and not to blame issues on its subcontractors. The responsibility lies solely with the developer, Harron Homes. The snagging issues have to be resolved within a respectful timeframe, without the pandemic being used as an excuse, as I have heard from Harron Homes before.

There also has to be an auditing process in place. When a developer hands over a completed house to a purchaser, it surely has a responsibility to go back to the purchaser and say, “Has the home been completed to the standard that you expected?” That surely has to happen after six months and then potentially after a year. Harron Homes has done none of that.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage, I would like to see a much tougher regime for the quality of house building, with a fixed-term timeframe for completion and with possible penalties if homes are not completed.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I thank hon. Members for keeping to time limits; it is appreciated. We move to the Front Benchers. There will be 10 minutes for the two Front Benchers and then a short time for the mover of the motion to wind up.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I wish all hon. Members and staff present a happy new year, and add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) on securing this important debate, and on his comprehensive and extremely well-judged introductory remarks.

As expected, given the subject, this has been a wide-ranging debate, with a series of thoughtful contributions informed by the experiences of hon. Members on both sides with new build developments in their respective constituencies. I highlight, in particular, the contributions made by my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who spoke of the importance of local authorities in housing and planning and the imbalance of power between councils and developers, and the constraints that the former therefore face when it comes to meeting the needs of their populations.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) spoke powerfully about cases of unscrupulous developers in their own constituencies, as did the hon. Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) in relation to Harron Homes, and the lack of accountability, at least in the current system, for redress for the serious defects that people face.

In the time available, I would like to expand on three issues that have featured in the debate this morning and that the hon. Member for Wantage touched on in his introductory remarks. First, what is the quality of new homes being built? Secondly, as well as building new homes, do we have a system that supports the creation of sustainable communities where individuals and families can not just live but thrive? Thirdly, are buyers of new build homes getting a fair deal?

I turn first to quality. It manifestly remains the case, despite the problem being both of long standing and widely understood, that a significant proportion of those buying recent new builds in England find, having moved into their new home, that their property has serious defects. As has been made clear today by cases from across the country, to which I could add a great many from my own constituency, we are talking here not about minor snagging issues but about major defects, whether that be in relation to the fabric of the building, unfinished fittings, or faults with utilities.

The fundamental reason why standards remain too low is simple: the housing market is broken and the planning system is in crisis. As the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) argued, the housing market does not have sufficient diversity of supply, and it is not one in which—aside from a minority of homes at the very top end of the market—quality of product is rewarded by price. A decade of planning deregulation has exacerbated that situation, and the relaxation of permitted development is the most egregious example of decisions taken by this Conservative Government that will increase the amount of substandard housing being delivered across the country, with all the negative impacts on health and life chances that flow from that. For all the rhetoric about beauty and the various initiatives announced in the wake of the Building Better, Building Beautiful commission, the present system still overwhelmingly produces, as extensive analysis by the Place Alliance has shown, “mediocre” or “poor” outcomes when it comes to build quality and design.

We of course must robustly challenge developers and house builders to improve their performance, and call out those choosing not to build better-quality housing or using the planning appeals process to force through schemes with the lowest design quality, but there is much more that the Government could do to drive up standards. The establishment of the new homes ombudsman is of course welcome, although the Minister will know the concerns that Opposition Members have about the scheme’s membership. Likewise, we welcome the publication of the new homes quality code. However, given its nature and the fact that it relies on compliance with national standards that currently, I argue, fall far short, we have little confidence that it will lead to the needed step change in developer behaviour. The fact is that until the Government act to ensure that we have a planning system fit for purpose and make greater progress on diversifying the housing industry and delivering a marked increase in output, including in terms of genuinely affordable homes, the numbers seeking redress for serious defects are unlikely to fall significantly.

I turn next to the question of how we ensure that the construction of new homes creates sustainable and thriving communities. As things stand, far too many new build developments are not being delivered with the necessary key amenities and social and physical infrastructure to provide for such communities, and we have heard a great many examples this morning. That is because the present housing and planning framework is simply not conducive to effective place making. Of course, that is not a new phenomenon—indeed, it was remarked upon as far back as the 2007 Callcutt review. But the problem has become more acute in recent years, as a direct result of this Government’s commitment to deregulating the planning system, with the relaxation of permitted development rights in particular preventing councils—the skills, morale and capacity of whose planning departments are at an all-time low after a decade of budget cuts—from co-ordinating development or planning vital infrastructure and services.

The situation is having a direct impact on the provision of environmentally sustainable development—for example, in terms of the relationship between relatively inaccessible development sites and rates of sustainable transport use, or buildings that are constructed on sites without due regard to climate resilience. Again, the fundamental problem is a development model that is geared primarily towards the wants of developers, as opposed to one whose primary purpose is securing what is in the public interest.

When it comes to enabling effective place making, the Government must, as a minimum, rescind the damaging relaxation of permitted development rights and return those powers to local government. Ministers should then turn their attention to what more the Government must do to encourage the creation of thriving communities that support the health and wellbeing of their residents, not least by implementing comprehensive national housing standards so that developers—particularly the volume housebuilders—have no choice but to deliver in core place making.

Lastly, turning to whether those people buying new homes are getting a fair deal, the answer in far too many cases is clearly no, particularly for leaseholders. That is most obvious in the topical issue of ground rents for new leasehold homes. The House will know that the Opposition welcome the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill but remain of the view that onerous ground rents must be tackled for existing long residential leases, not just new homes, and we urge the Government once again to reconsider their position on the matter.

With regard to existing long residential leases, we welcome the commitment given by Taylor Wimpey to the Competition and Markets Authority to remove onerous ground rent terms from its existing contracts. The imposition of those terms was wholly unjustified, and it is obviously right that the relevant clauses will be removed. Other developers and freehold investors must also do the right thing and abandon escalation clauses in their leasehold contracts. When he responds, I would welcome the Minister making it clear, for the record, that that is what the Government now expect them to do.

However, the issue of ground rents is not the only way in which those buying new leasehold homes are getting a bad deal. There are a range of issues, from soaring service charges to the unregulated nature of managing agents, that all point to the need not only for measures to address specific problems, but for wider leasehold reform and reform of the current framework for resident control of estate management—issues that I have no doubt Ministers and I will return to on many future occasions.

On protecting the owners of new homes from abuse and poor service at the hands of disreputable management companies, I ask the Minister to tell the House whether the Government intend to implement the recommendations of the regulation of property agents working group, chaired by the noble Lord Best. What progress has been made on that, given that the final report was published back in July 2019?

To conclude, this has been a valuable debate and a welcome opportunity to hear the concerns of hon. Members from across the House regarding new homes. However, it is taking place after almost 12 years of Conservative-led Government, with numerous changes to housing and planning legislation in that time. Yet when it comes to new homes, the outcomes for people and communities, on the whole, have not only not improved but noticeably deteriorated in a number of key areas.

It is self-evident that more must be done to drive up quality and design standards across the industry, to enable and support more effective place making, and to ensure that those buying new homes get a fair deal. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, not least in relation to the planning legislation that we are told the Government remain committed to introducing and on what the Government will do differently to ensure that real progress is made on these objectives.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister. If he could allow a brief period at the end for the mover of the motion to wind up, that would be appreciated.