Building Safety Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 260 and 126. I apologise for not being here this morning. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for speaking to our amendments.

Amendment 260 enfranchises leaseholders and brings them closer to the decision-making processes of their building. It ensures that residents of the building are made aware, within the earliest reasonable timeframe, by the responsible person, when they are served any notice given by the fire and rescue service. It also ensures that, when in complying with the notice the responsible person passes costs on to residents, the residents will have 21 days after being informed to appeal this notice to the court.

The essence of this amendment touches upon the freeholder’s incentives, as there is no incentive for the freeholder to challenge a notice from the fire service requiring remedial work, since ultimately it is the tenants or the leaseholders who will shoulder these costs. The reality is that freeholders often do not have skin in the game and are more than happy to comply with a served notice, with the full knowledge that they will not be the ones incurring costs for complying with the notice. This amendment is not handing leaseholders the power to indefinitely hold up works necessary for the safety of the building. It is simply providing them, as the ones with real skin in the game, with the right of appeal.

I recognise that allowing any individual tenant the right of appeal is messy and may lead to a flurry of unnecessary appeals, which in turn could create unnecessary work when it is least needed. Nevertheless, in principle, leaseholders deserve enfranchisement and mechanisms to challenge decisions that are simply imposed on them. Appeals being done through a representative body—a recognised tenants association, for example—would represent a more sensible position, as that would prevent rogue leaseholders going against the majority to appeal decisions, while at the same time allowing appeals to occur through a body that is both representative and accountable to the leaseholder, and which retains regular communication with the responsible person.

I now turn to Amendment 124, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The definition of a qualifying lease and its implications are concerning, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, has pointed out. I am pleased that the Government have extended this definition to three dwellings in total, but it is still problematic. The protections under the waterfall system in Schedule 9 are only available for qualifying leases. Technically, an individual who owns three flats valued at £900,000 per dwelling would meet the cap of £15,000 for remedial costs, whereas an individual with five investment properties in the north of England valued at £200,000 per dwelling would be offered no protection and be liable for the entire remedial costs for each dwelling.

Is this not the sort of regionalism that the Government want to avoid in their levelling-up policy? Under the Government’s scheme, the individual, up in the north, for example, whose total property holdings are valued at £1 million, is required to pay for all their remedial costs, whereas their equivalent in London, with total property holdings of £2.7 million, would have their costs capped at £15,000. This example is to make the point that simplistically saying a number, whether it be one, two, four, whatever, for the number of leases allowed under the definition of a qualifying lease, says very little about the value of those apartments. It is evidently unfair that an individual with a much lower portfolio in value might incur much higher costs.

I accept the reality that, under any scheme, there will be winners and losers. However, I wonder whether the Government need to go back to the drawing board on how they determine whether a private landlord qualifies under the definition of a qualifying lease, as it is almost entirely void of context. It would be much wiser to determine the definition of a qualifying lease for private landlords based on the value of their entire property portfolio, rather than simply on the number of leases that they own.

This point about context brings us to the crux of what Amendment 124 would do, which is to provide some level of security to those receiving a state pension. Young landlords who may fail to qualify under the definition at least have the ability and the time to incorporate this setback into their retirement plans. It does not make it any less painful, but it would at least be a more manageable state of affairs for which they might be able to plan accordingly over many years if they have that time ahead in which to work. Furthermore, it would be assumed that many private landlords would be in receipt of an active income, probably a reasonable income, if they were able to afford multiple leases and not be classed as a qualifying lease. Regardless of whether this means that their exclusion is fair, at the very minimum they have the possibility of greater future earnings. The hope is that those individuals may at least be able to weather these costs in the long run and secure for themselves the financial future they want in retirement.

However, pensioners do not have this luxury. Beyond their state and work pensions, savings and any income they get from renting out properties or other dividends, there is almost a negligible prospect of them finding additional ways to raise money. The whole point of planning for your pension is the knowledge that whatever you have in your possession at the point of retirement is what you will be required to live on for the rest of your life. What concerns me is the notion that, as a result of this definition of a qualifying lease, some pensioners who have worked their entire lives and saved and invested diligently so they can enjoy their retirement without financial worry will be suddenly forced to raise enormous amounts of capital to fund remedial works. How does one expect a pensioner to raise such funds? I hope that my concerns are not well founded, but I fear that unless the definition of a qualifying lease makes reference to those on pensions, retirees may find their entire financial life’s work in tatters.

I am not a fan of the simplistic way in which the Government are deciding which private landlords do or do not qualify under the definition. However, if I am forced to work within this framework, I think that the provisions contained within Amendment 124, in ensuring that pensioners who own up to six leases in total also fall under the definition of a qualifying lease, are fair ones that protect those who will find it exceedingly difficult to adjust financially to the bills that may come their way.

In this vein, I also support the provisions contained in Amendment 123, extending that number of leases up to five. However, I believe even this is a sticking plaster, for the reasons that I have just outlined, as it says nothing about the value of an individual’s property portfolio.

I really hope that the Government will be able to do something more on this and, at a minimum, offer some assurances to those pensioners affected that they will not see their life’s financial planning reduced to ruin. More comprehensively, I hope that between now and Third Reading the Government will look at this definition of a qualifying lease for private landlords and how in reality it is to the benefit of private landlords with a few but highly expensive leasehold properties.

I am pleased to see Amendments 165 and 165A and their attempt to address the question of how a flat will be valued under the definition of a qualifying lease. However, I express a degree of concern about Amendment 165, as there are leaseholders I have met, not necessarily very wealthy, who purchased a leasehold flat for marginally over £1 million in London only to find that, as a result of requirements to undertake remedial works, the value has dramatically dropped and is now far less than the purchase price. Valuing their flats at the purchase price would likely mean that many leasehold flats which have lost significant value were brought into a cap which no longer reflected their current value. For this reason, I welcome Amendment 165A, as it would force the Government to consider issues surrounding negative equity when drawing up their mechanism to value these leases. I know that the Minister gave some reassuring comments during a meeting we had and hope that he might expand on them today so that leaseholders can be reassured that their leases will be fairly valued.

Finally, I support all those amendments in this group seeking to reduce the costs that can be passed on to leaseholders, along with Amendment 115, which would extend the cost protection to leaseholders in buildings of all heights. Taken together, these amendments could provide a package of measures that would deliver justice to those unfairly caught up in this scandal.