Freehold Estate Fees

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is a close neighbour, for securing this debate on such an important issue, which affects every constituency in the country, and certainly many of my constituents in Sunderland Central.

In my years as an MP, numerous constituents have come to me about the subject of freehold properties and management costs. They come with real issues regarding the environment around their properties and the lack of care by companies. They often pay large sums of money that increase without much notice or any relation to cost. They are paying the money—often hundreds of pounds a year—that they agreed to and not getting the services or the maintenance that they are paying for. In an area such as Sunderland, which is a low-wage area, it is often a large proportion of the money coming into people’s homes every week. They are keeping their side of the contract, but the companies are not keeping theirs.

I would like to highlight a couple of things that have happened to my constituents. A light in a communal area took six months to get fixed, and when it was fixed the light was unsuitable for the job it had to do, and was not to the standard of the one before. That led to all sorts of issues to do with safety and all the other problems, including antisocial behaviour, that come when areas are not lighted.

Another example was people coming to do a grounds maintenance job sitting in the van all day because there was nobody to direct them or instruct them about what to do. Not only is paying people to sit in a van not knowing what to do an absolute waste of the company’s resources, it wastes the hard-earned money of my constituents, who pay fees for a job that should be done.

I endorse the points that have been made by my colleagues, and I will not repeat them. Sadly in the current climate, many people would like local authorities to take over maintenance issues, but in Sunderland we have had cuts to our local authority budgets of some £250 million since 2010, so financially it is simply not an option. Councils are struggling to maintain their frontline services, and they do not have the funds to put aside to take over that responsibility.

Effective and intelligent regulation can ensure that this does not happen again. Transparency needs to be brought into the system, and the Government need to act. It is not good enough simply to act in future on new properties; we have had many years of problems building up. In some cases, it is making houses unsellable, which needs to be addressed. The Government need to look very carefully at what they can do to mitigate the problems of people who already live in and own their own properties, and are paying these very unscrupulous, completely not transparent fees.