Commonhold and Leasehold Reform: Managing Agents

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is about to come on to property managing agents. May I add to the experiences heard by her Committee the experiences of constituents in my communities? Probably one third of the casework that I deal with relates to the poor performance of property managing agents. Does she agree that many leaseholders face real difficulty in getting proper recourse? A much tougher regime than the one currently in place, involving the property ombudsman and the property redress scheme, is urgently needed if leaseholders are to have genuine hope that their concerns about managing agents will be taken seriously.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend, a fellow London MP, for that intervention. This issue is not just isolated to London; it happens in many areas right across the country, and it was raised continuously throughout our inquiry. As I mentioned, I will come on to the issue of managing agents more broadly.

Our Committee is broadly supportive of the move to commonhold. That said, we have two key questions about its implementation. First, the Government must clarify what voting rights shared owners will have in commonholds. The Government have indicated that housing associations may have control over the votes of shared owners during the 10-year initial repair period of their properties. That could leave shared owners without any say in decisions that directly affect their homes. We call on the Government to clarify the position on this matter. We must ensure that the vote can be split between shared owners and their housing providers if necessary, so that shared ownership leaseholders get a meaningful say.

Secondly, we need to ensure that as many existing leaseholders as possible are able to convert to commonhold. The Government want all new build homes to be commonhold and to support existing leaseholders to convert. However, the draft Bill does not enact important recommendations from the Law Commission that would make it easier for leaseholders to buy out their freeholder and make the important switch. Our report includes proposals on how some of those recommendations could be included. If it is not possible to include them in this Bill, the Government must bring forward further legislation later in this Parliament. We do not want to run the risk of leaving some leaseholders behind.

The biggest issue and source of frustration for so many homeowners and leaseholders in the leasehold system is the quality—or lack of it—and service provided by their managing agents. Many colleagues from across the House will share cases involving their constituents in this afternoon’s debate, but it will come as no surprise to anyone that one company came up time and again in the stories we heard from leaseholders. That company was FirstPort, the largest independent managing agent in England. Last year, the Minister said he had “significant concerns” about FirstPort’s unreasonable service charges, its slow response to complaints and its approach to debt collection.

Ultimately, the problem with many of these managing agents is that they are taking advantage of a captive market. They effectively have a monopoly on individual estates, meaning that they are able to treat homeowners with sheer contempt. In the words of one leaseholder we heard from, homeowners are left feeling “like cash cows”.