Freehold Estate Fees

Debate between Helen Goodman and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kit Malthouse]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a valid point. We are also considering whether freeholders should have a right to change the provider of maintenance services by applying to the tribunal for the appointment of a new manager, which might be useful for existing freeholders if they are dissatisfied with the service they receive. The Government intend to introduce legislation to implement the changes as soon as parliamentary time allows. The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) quite rightly challenged us on when that might be; she will know that we have an exciting and packed legislative timetable at the moment, but our aspiration is that the legislation will be introduced within the next 12 months. I realise that there are many impatient freeholders out there, but we have to deal with the small matter of national destiny before we get on to equally pressing matters on the domestic agenda. I assure her that we will give it our attention as soon as we can.

It is absolutely right that consumers should have fair, quick and easy ways to get things put right when they have problems. In October we announced our intention to introduce legislation to require all developers to belong to a new homes ombudsman. Last year, we consulted on how we could improve redress for residents across all housing sectors, and we will publish our response to that consultation shortly.

It has been argued that local authorities should be compelled to adopt all communal facilities on a new estate. At this point it is worth pausing to consider planning arrangements and how they support new developments. When a new development is granted planning permission, local authorities can use conditions, or a section 106 planning obligation, to secure a commitment from developers to provide and maintain open and communal space. This means that the local authority does not have to adopt or maintain the land at its own expense.

It is up to developers and the local planning authority to agree appropriate funding arrangements as part of those commitments. Conditions and planning obligations cannot, however, currently be used to compel local authorities to do something. The local authority has powers to ensure that developers build and maintain communal facilities to the standards and quality set out in the planning permission. In terms of roads, local highways authorities are responsible for the maintenance of local public roads in England. A decision on whether to adopt a road is a matter for the local highway authority and the Government have no direct role in that process.

It has been suggested that freeholders who pay these charges should receive a rebate in their council tax. We think that argument is misplaced. The amount of council tax due from each of us is not adjusted to reflect the specific level of services we receive as residents of the area. Instead, the level of council tax helps the authority to deliver a broad range of services to the wider community in its area. It is open to local authorities to offer council tax discounts to individuals or groups of taxpayers. This is an entirely local decision.

In the end, all these matters have to be paid for. There is only so much money that can be extracted from a particular housing development. It is therefore at the discretion of local authorities to decide the balance of 106, the cost to them of adopting measures, and where and when maintenance should fall on residents rather than on the local authority.

It should always be clear to potential purchasers what the arrangements are for the upkeep of open space and the maintenance of roads. However, we do not think that requiring local authorities to adopt all communal facilities on new developments is the right approach. It removes local flexibility and, in our view, sends the wrong message to developers about their responsibilities.

I do agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland regarding redress. Consumers must have effective ways to get things put right when they have a problem with their housing. That is why we are committed to legislate, so that freeholders have a right to challenge the reasonableness of any maintenance charges for which they are liable. That is why we will establish a new homes ombudsman to protect the interests of homebuyers and hold developers to account when things go wrong.

The hon. Member for Croydon Central asked four specific questions. First, I am certainly willing to consider the suggestion to use Help to Buy as a lever to improve standards. Secondly, on mis-selling, it is open to any hon. Member to make a reference to the regulatory authorities, whether that be the FCA or the Senior Salaries Review Body. Is the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland still on the Treasury Committee?

[Helen Goodman]

indicated dissent.

[Kit Malthouse]

Well, the hon. Lady knows the FCA well, so if she wants to make a reference, then by all means she should. She asked me about the legislative timetable. Our aspiration is for some time in the next 12 months. The terms of reference have not been decided for Lord Best’s review of leasehold and whether those lessons could be transferred across the field. We will certainly consider that suggestion as part of the process.

In conclusion, it is certainly the case that as a constituency MP I have experience of exactly the issues that have been raised, and I have been in discussion, shall we say, with the developers concerned in my own constituency, so I am well aware of the issues that have been aired this afternoon. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing such focus to the matter. I assure her that we will take action as soon as we can.

Paris Climate Change Conference

Debate between Helen Goodman and Kit Malthouse

Thursday 19th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

It is good to remove coal—there is no contention about that—but it would be better to replace it with more solar and more wind. That is the simple proposition I am making.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for taking this frenzy of interventions. One thing she has not so far said—she must forgive me if I am not completely au fait with His Holiness’s utterances on this subject—is whether he mentions investment in technology. Surely the lesson of the history of humanity is that science has broadly solved pretty much all our problems when they have presented themselves to us.

Some significant technologies are a little starved of Government investment across the world. I have a particular enthusiasm for the fuel cell and the hydrogen economy that will, I hope, replace the carbon economy in my lifetime as one that is less damaging to the planet. Does she agree that perhaps one thing we should do at the Paris summit is to agree—much as we have on dementia, for instance—that global action on investment in technology and science can solve these problems as much as behavioural change can, not least with the hydrogen economy at the forefront of global considerations, as many countries are now realising?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. Of course we need new technologies. One of the problems at the moment is that people trying to invest in new technologies—for example, big battery storage technologies—cannot get funding. They cannot even get them funded by the UK Green Investment Bank. I do not think it is very helpful to privatise the Green Investment Bank when that is the case, or to change the policy framework, which means that we will lose the clarity, simplicity and confidence that industry needs in order to plan its investment over the medium term. We cannot just switch this on and off like the lights; we need to think about it decades ahead.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sorry to repeat myself, but that was broadly my point. I was trying to make the point about the Paris conference that, as much as the hon. Lady says the emphasis should be on an agreement about behavioural change by business and industry, there should be a global agreement on investment in exactly the technologies that she says are starved of money. That might mean the Government having to make up for a market failure by investing in them to a certain extent. Nevertheless, as she says, given that we need a decadal view—out to when my grandchildren will be born—such investment needs to put in now. It may be that that has to be paid for out of the global public purse.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to have intelligent investment in technology, but I want to draw him back to paying a little attention to the Pope’s encyclical. An over-reliance and an over-optimism about technical fixes when we do not know whether they will actually work has encouraged us to consume too much and to be too destructive. We need to keep such things in the balance as we develop policy.

National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill

Debate between Helen Goodman and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

I am saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to consider that, rather than pre-committing in the way that the Bill is doing. That seems to be common sense.

It is surprising that the Treasury thinks that it can simply continue to switch off policy levers and that that is an intelligent way of carrying on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South has said, commentators including the Financial Times and PricewaterhouseCoopers have pointed out that this measure will force the Government into a more difficult and tricky situation. The position will become more constrained, and it will be more difficult to take sensible decisions on raising money. The Bill will put more pressure on the Government to cut public spending.

[Kit Malthouse]

I think I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support earlier. That was kind of her. Would she accept that one of the strengths of having these measures embedded in legislation is that if a future Chancellor were to decide that he or she wanted to raise national insurance rates, an element of delay would be injected into the proceedings by dint of the repeal process? That would give businesses some months—and possibly a year or even longer, if the House were so to decide—in which to adjust to what would otherwise have been a sudden decision.

[Helen Goodman]

Well, it might or it might not, depending on the circumstances.

This quest for certainty is quite reasonable in regard to small businesses—