Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the support that has just been expressed for her comments demonstrates that many of us see these issues in our constituency. As she says, it is vital that we give people who have made such sacrifices in order to achieve first-time home ownership the right to, and the greatest control over, that ownership.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

In my constituency, Victoria Avenue (Harvest Grove) Management Company seems to be extorting money from leaseholders and not providing any of the works that it says it is providing. It is taking them to court and charging them for the benefit of having letters sent to them with invoices. Through this Bill, we desperately need to redress the balance between freeholders and leaseholders. Will the Minister see that that is the case?

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He makes a very important point about transparency, which is at the heart of the service charge changes in the Bill. He makes an extremely important point about fairness. Not all companies will be doing things that are incorrect, but where they have been found to be incorrect, it is important that they shoulder their own costs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend moves me on to my second point. We also recognise the strength of feeling on the vexed issue of forfeiture. The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) made a clear case on this in Committee, as did other Members, and I also heard a passionate and eloquent case in Committee from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes).

[Eddie Hughes]

Will the Minister simply remove any opportunity for forfeiture? It is arcane and has no place in our system. I strongly suspect that would get support on both sides of the House.

[Lee Rowley]

The House sees my hon. Friend’s passion, which he demonstrated in Committee and is demonstrating again today. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch made passionate cases in Committee.

I recognise that this is a real and significant problem, and there is a huge iniquity at stake. I have heard from colleagues, both today and previously, about why we should act, and we are currently working through the detail of the issue. We will report back to the House with more details shortly.

Finally, a comprehensive debate in Committee on freehold estates was led by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller). He is a committed campaigner on this issue, and I know that many other Members also have very strong views. I have also been involved in this in places such as Alderman Park and Hunloke Grove in my constituency. We understand the strength of feeling on this issue, and we are considering it further.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Tenth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to continue our line-by-line proceedings with you in the Chair, Sir Edward. For the sake of probity, simply because I will make reference to the organisation’s work, I once again declare that my wife is the joint chief executive of the Law Commission.

The reason for tabling the new clause is simple: forfeiture is a wholly disproportionate and horrifically draconian mechanism for ensuring compliance with a lease agreement, and it needs to be abolished through the Bill. To remind the Committee, the law of forfeiture gives the landlord the right, following a breach of a clause in the lease or an unpaid debt of £350, or a lesser sum if it has been outstanding for more than three years, to terminate the lease, regain possession of the property and pocket the unmerited windfall gain that would accrue from its sale.

Not all forfeiture actions relate to trivial breaches—some are made in response to serious transgressions of a covenant in a lease, such as instances of persistent and egregious antisocial behaviour—but many are initiated for entirely trivial breaches, such as nominal ground rent or service charge arrears. The current laws of forfeiture render it entirely possible, for example, for a tenant to lose possession of a £500,000 flat or house for a debt of as little as £351, or even £15 if unpaid for more than three years, with the landlord keeping the entire difference between the value of the property and the debt owed.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a compelling speech. It seems crazy that in the 21st century somebody can lose possession of their property for such a small amount of money. I sincerely hope that he continues his compelling speech in such a way that he has a very positive effect on the Minister.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. I hope that I do have that effect, and that he can use his good offices to persuade the Minister of the merits of adopting new clause 1.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Ninth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Sir Mark. The civil engineer in me rises to agree with the hon. Gentleman completely; it is slightly embarrassing that we once again find common cause. The point is well made: if a set standard is identified that will be accepted universally by councils as one they would be prepared to adopt, and forced on the developers, the developers will meet that standard, but if they are left with any opportunity to build something substandard, they will always take it and they will frequently try to go further and not even meet the standard that they have prescribed in their own design work. I am sure that all Committee members will have seen examples of that in their constituencies. I again find common cause, and I hope the Minister considers these points.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; it is a habit that I hope he continues because I think there is common ground here. When it comes to common adoptable standards, Ministers have often put it to me—the Minister no doubt will; previous Ministers have done—that local authorities have the tools they need to drive up the standards of public amenities that are constructed, but there is clearly something going wrong in that they are not ensuring that those standards are in place. As a consequence—not in every instance, but in many—local authorities have good reason to be reluctant to take them on.

We have tabled amendment 150 in an attempt to challenge the Government to consider how they might utilise the regulatory framework introduced by part 4 to drive up the standards of public amenities on the estates in question—that is the other half of the equation that I think we are all agreed we need. Our amendment would ensure that services or works on private or mixed-tenure estates that are required as a result of defects in construction are not relevant costs for the purposes of estate management. I think that, rather than the amendment of the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, would be the incentive that developers need to ensure that high standards are in place at the point that they hand the estate over. Ours is consciously a probing amendment and I hope the Minister will understand and appreciate the problem that it attempts to address, as does the hon. Member’s amendment. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts on it.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Seventh sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 25th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Lee Rowley]

I thank the hon. Member for his amendment. Even though I will not be accepting it today, it raises an important question and he is right to allow us to debate it. We absolutely recognise that leaseholders who pay fixed service charges do not have the same rights of challenge as leaseholders who pay variable service charges—that is accepted and understood—but it is also the case that there are good reasons for that.

As the hon. Member indicated, the main sectors where fixed charges exist are the retirement and social housing sectors, where households are often on limited and fixed incomes, as I do not need to explain to the Committee. Leaseholders, especially those on low incomes, who pay a fixed service charge have certainty about that charge, whereas those who pay variable service charges do not. Landlords benefit from not having to consider tribunal applications but, in return, they should have a clear imperative to provide value for money.

If we were to grant the right to challenge fixed service charges in a similar way to how variable service charges can be challenged, there would be some operational and practical challenges, which is one of the reasons why we will not agree to the amendment today. For example, if landlords underestimate costs in one year, but overestimate them in another, is it feasible and reasonable to be able to challenge the reasonableness only in the year in which the costs are overestimated? Should a reciprocal ability to challenge or to recover the balance of an underestimated cost in a year, on the basis that it would be reasonable to do so, not be proposed? Landlords might move away from employing fixed service charges and switch to variable service charges, which could have unintended consequences.

Fundamentally, I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that there are challenges in all parts of service charges, and so there will be challenges within fixed service charges. The whole point of other elements of the Bill is to provide transparency and visibility of the reasoning for charges being made. For the reasons I have outlined, we are not of the view that this extension should be made for fixed charges.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I want to pick up on the shadow Minister’s point about ambiguity. There is no definition of what exactly would constitute a fixed charge, so there is the opportunity for flexibility or the law of unintended consequences. Given the lack of opportunity for subsequent challenge, a landlord might choose to move a charge from one column to the other. When the Minister said he would not accept the amendment today, did he mean he would give this point some further consideration in the future, or was he just being polite?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Notwithstanding the tone of my responses, given the Committee’s interest I will happily write to it to make sure there is clarity on that point. I hope that, as a general and broad macro point, my comment still stands.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Eighth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 25th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It’s like those leases he keeps talking about; they just keep rolling round.

[Barry Gardiner]

Oh yes, I was intervening.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Fifth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Lee Rowley]

I thank hon. Members and Friends for their contributions. I will take them in turn. On the amendment, I find myself in the slightly unusual place of arguing against a Henry VIII power, as they are occasionally called and as he referred to them. As indicated, there are a number of Henry VIII powers in the Bill, and I am sure that people will have views on them when we get to them. Our colleagues in the other place often have very strong views on such powers. It is an unusual place to be, but I happily take it up.

I absolutely understand the point that hon. Members have made and the reality of what they are trying to articulate. The fact that we are making a change indicates that there are times when it is proportionate and reasonable to make changes. The reason for the Government’s not taking powers in secondary legislation—which I know, joking aside, that hon. Members would accept—is that there is a continuum for drawing or not drawing lines, and we think that this does not necessarily need to be on the line of taking powers in order to do things in secondary legislation, simply because this is a substantial change. It is being actively debated; Members are debating whether it is sufficient and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch asked, precisely how it will work to improve the situation in practice. I think the Government’s preference is to keep that discussion in primary legislation. We recognise that primary legislation is always more challenging in terms of timelines and space in this place, but it is a sufficiently important change that it should be able to be debated in the way we are doing today.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I understand that it is appropriate to future-proof legislation and allow for flexibility, but I agree with the Minister that a substantial change has already been made. Proportionately, we are talking about the number of buildings that have already been constructed, and therefore the people that we are helping. I fully appreciate that the shadow Minister is concerned about future developers gaming the system, but in terms of proportion, it is important that we focus our efforts on the buildings that have been built.

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting that. The shadow Minister expressed hope that the Government would agree with some of his amendments at some point. I am afraid that I will have to dash his hope on this one. We understand its purpose, but on the basis that I have articulated, we would prefer to keep this in primary legislation. I hope that the shadow Minister might consider withdrawing the amendment.

On clause 3, as it stands, we have been clear that we want to improve access to collective enfranchisement so that more leaseholders of flats can enjoy the benefit of freehold ownership. Many leaseholders in mixed-use but predominantly residential buildings are currently prevented from buying their freehold, as hon. Members have indicated. Clause 3 amends the 1993 Act to increase that limit from 25% to 50%. This has been consulted on widely and was recommended by the Law Commission. Where residential leaseholders take up the majority of the floor space in a building, it is our view that they should be able to access the long-term security and control that comes with freehold ownership, if they choose to do so.

We recognise that this change impacts freeholders. If the leaseholders choose to buy their freehold, the freeholder stands to lose ownership of individual buildings, and that may fragment ownership of some areas over a longer timeframe. We believe that impact to be justified not only because of the significant benefit to leaseholders but because freeholders will be compensated for that loss. We do not believe, as a principle, that the single contiguous ownership of space is absolutely necessary for buildings to be managed well.

We have also heard arguments from leaseholders that they will be unable to professionally manage mixed-use buildings. Although I understand their point, through, for example, the delegation of a building’s management to an agent, that should be overcome. I accept the points made and understand the shadow Minister’s point on the difficulty of ensuring that leaseholders can be engaged to the point where they pass the threshold, whatever the number—and all numbers are ultimately arbitrary. As he has indicated, I think the Committee will return to this, but we think the clause, as it stands, is the right approach. Therefore, we resist the amendment and hope that the shadow Minister will withdraw it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his legitimate points. He is absolutely right that it is important that right hon. and hon. Members have an opportunity to debate at the earliest possible opportunity the complex interaction of what we may or may not choose to do with the consultation. I take his point about hypotheticals. My point was simply that there are a number of different options in the Bill. Some of them are substantially different, as my hon. Friend indicated in some of his questions last week. To go through all the elements of the potential outcomes in all of those different options would be a substantial amount of work and potentially not necessary on the basis that we are likely to choose some rather than all of them. None the less, where I have missed anything out, I will—

[Eddie Hughes]

The point being made is one of proportion. We are talking about a couple of a billion pounds versus up to £25 billion, £27 billion, which is a significant amount of money for the Government to be considering transferring, as my hon. Friend says, from one party to another. The size of the costs that might be incurred from one party to another makes it important for us to know as soon as possible.

[Lee Rowley]

I absolutely accept the potential significance of the quantum involved, which is why we all seek to be as clear as we can at the earliest opportunity.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Third sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Would you welcome amendments to the Bill to try to capture that by regulation, by legislation?

Paul Broadhead: Yes. Anything that makes it clearer and gives lenders confidence and consumers confidence that their building is safe and they are not going to face an unexpected bill has to be welcome.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Q I am slightly confused. I thought it was now the case that properties did have to be advertised as leasehold or freehold. Has that changed?

Paul Broadhead: Well, often the advert will say that a property is leasehold but that that will be confirmed by the conveyancer, so you do not know 100% whether it is leasehold or what the terms of the lease are.

[Eddie Hughes]

Q So there is not an obligation currently for estate agents to market properties in a way identifying whether they are leasehold.

Paul Broadhead: Not to my knowledge, no. I do not think there is.

[Eddie Hughes]

Q Maybe I made a mistake. You said that it would take some time to unwind the fact that we have—currently—4 million leasehold properties in the country. Can you give us an idea of how long you think it will take, depending on the outcome of the Government’s recent consultation? Were they to move to peppercorn rates, how long would this take to unwind? And give us a flavour of what would be the complexities.

Paul Broadhead: In terms of the peppercorn rate, it is a really difficult question, because it is almost, “How long is a piece of string?”

[Eddie Hughes]

Q But you are a man who knows, so even if you just give us your thoughts, that will be helpful.

Paul Broadhead: I still think it would take decades to unwind everything to a peppercorn rate, because you need the group of leaseholders together to agree to enfranchise, which is quite difficult. I will give you one example we have come across, which was following the escalating ground rents. Housebuilders had written out to leaseholders and said, “We will convert your property to leasehold for free. We are going back on what we’ve done; we think we did the wrong thing.” The number of people coming forward and taking that up was negligible. You need to engage consumers. It is not just about putting the building blocks in place to make this better; it is enabling—

[Eddie Hughes]

Q Or to make it possible. Just because it is possible, does not mean it will actually happen.

Paul Broadhead: Absolutely, and you still need to engage the public and the legal profession that is taking people through, to make sure they understand what the benefits are and the cost of that. That individual value equation will change from leaseholder to leaseholder.

[Eddie Hughes]

That is very helpful, thank you.

[The Chair]

We have five minutes left. I will turn to Lee Rowley but please bear in mind that I want to bring in Barry as well.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill (Fourth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Barry Gardiner]

I am sure hon. Members can ponder on your words and work it out from there. Thank you; that is really helpful.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Q Mr Freedman, you represent developers and investors as part of your job. You just referenced the possible impact on pension funds. How significant is that? I am hearing, on the one hand, that people have very diverse portfolios, so although it would be a big number, it would be broadly distributed, nobody would actually feel any real impact and this is just a bit of shroud waving by people who would rather be very rich instead of quite rich. However, there are other people who say, “Hang on a sec, this is not very Conservative, is it?” or, as has been said, that we are talking about transferring wealth from one bunch of people to another. Clearly, Parliament can do that, but the impact might be greater on one than the other. I just wondered about your thoughts on that.

Philip Freedman: I am afraid that I cannot give you the answer to that. because I am not directly acting for those particular clients. I am afraid I know no more—

[Eddie Hughes]

You do not have a view. We will not take your professional—

Philip Freedman: I can completely understand that pension funds have invested in part in long-term income that they believed to be secure when they did it—that is, income for 90 years, 990 years or whatever it was going to be. I am told that a number of pension funds and other types of investment entity have invested cautiously, not necessarily buying portfolios where there are hugely escalating ground rents, but either fixed ground rents or modestly increasing ground rents that people would not say were egregious. However, they are still concerned because, in many parts of the country, particularly in the north-east, for example, property prices are so low that even 0.1%—even 1,000th of the price of a flat—would reduce the ground rent. The ground rent might be £100 a year or something, but the cap would result in it being £50 a year or something like that. Obviously, the impact would be great for those portfolios that have hundreds or thousands of these.

[Mike Amesbury]

Q Your organisation has said it is disappointed that the Bill does not deal with the regulation of managing and property agents. Can you elaborate on that? What needs to be included in the Bill?

Philip Freedman: The Law Society has been participating in various working groups following Lord Best’s report, trying to help with the preparation of codes of practice that were intended to sit underneath the regulatory framework for property agents of different types, whether selling agents, managing agents or whatever. We feel that, because tenants often do not know what their rights are, and if they did know what their rights were, they may not want to spend the time or money getting someone to help them enforce their rights, you come back to the people actually doing the management. They need to be proactively willing to be transparent, and to realise that they have duties to the tenants as well as to the landlord. It needs a mindset change in the people who are doing the management. You do not want to rely on tenants having to try and find out what their rights are and then enforcing them. We feel, therefore, that a lot of the changes in the Bill, and other changes that have been talked about, will be better achieved if property managers are regulated, and that the right people with the right tuition being told what their duties are would be improved by regulation.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

I welcome the Minister’s response and his commitment to look further at this matter. Although the mandatory duty is welcome, we have real concerns about the ability of local authorities to properly investigate and enforce. We will come back to those concerns, because they relate to a number of areas in the Bill. I therefore hope that the Minister goes away and thinks about every—

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

There is form in this area: a landlord cannot evict their tenants if the property does not have an energy performance certificate. It seems like an interesting proposal.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I have covered all bases in our set of amendments. We will come to the preconditions and requirements that have developed around section 21 that fall away under the Bill; they are a concern. The hon. Gentleman is right: to serve a section 21 notice, a number of regulatory obligations must be met.

Renters (Reform) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Public Bill Committees

Given how threadbare the case for new mandatory ground 8A is, one is forced to conclude—the Minister will know that I have not bandied this charge around casually—that the Government have chosen to incorporate it in the Bill purely at the behest of those voices in the landlord lobby who have been forced to accept, but are by no means happy about, the wider reforms contained in this legislation. We are extremely concerned about the implications of leaving new ground 8A in the Bill.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I am interested in the argument that the hon. Gentleman is making, although I am slightly confused by some elements of it. Given the fact that he suggested that the likelihood of its occurrence were vanishingly small, why does he think that any landlord would lobby the Government to include something that, based on the statistics he has quoted, they have never had experience of? I can only say that in my experience, anecdotally—I do not have anything that I can reference for it—a number of people have adopted this approach previously, and it is frustrating for both the courts and landlords. However, I follow the argument that the hon. Gentleman is making; it is very interesting.

[The Chair]

Order. Interventions must be brief.