Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his clear explanation of the Bill and for the time that he spent last week talking to those who have an interest in it. I welcome its provisions, which enable us to make the best use of our natural resources—in this case, offshore wind—in turn helping us to meet our environmental targets. I know that others will speak on those targets, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, as chair of Peers for the Planet, of which I am a very small satellite.

As the Minister said, the Bill amends the Crown Estate Act 1961. Its Second Reading in your Lordships’ House that year was over in under half an hour, with only two speeches, the response from the Labour Front Bench being made by the Earl of Lucan, father of the one who disappeared. Today the Bill may get greater analysis. I will leave others to address the specific issue of the seabed and turn my attention to the broader issue of the governance of the Crown Estate.

The Bill’s Explanatory Notes say that it makes amendments to Schedule 1 to the Crown Estate Act 1961 which are

“intended to bring The Crown Estate’s constitution in line with best practice for modern corporate governance”.

In 1961, the Crown Estate was the fairly passive holder of land owned by the Crown, at a time when issues of transparency and accountability were very different. Now, if we look through the impressive 173 pages of the Crown Estate’s annual report, we see that it is a totally different organisation. The briefing notes to the King’s Speech said:

“The Crown Estate plays a critical role in maintaining and improving public infrastructure of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and generates a financial return for the Government worth over £3 billion in the last decade. This money helps fund vital public services”.


I applaud its many achievements, which the Minister touched on. However, it has no shareholders. It is independent of the Government and the monarchy and is run by 12 commissioners. It floats in a public space on its own, with an umbilical cord to the Treasury in a framework agreement, on which more in a moment.

This raises the question of whether the governance structure is still appropriate, 60 years after the legislation introducing it was passed, with very minor amendments touched on by the Minister today. Is the modest addition of an extra commissioner, as proposed by the Bill, adequate? Does it really bring the Crown Estate in line with best practice for modern corporate governance? How is it held to account? The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who will speak later, may address this issue in more abrasive terms than those that I plan to use.

To make my point, I turn to the issue of undertakings given to Parliament by the Crown in return for not being covered by legislation, a privilege not accorded to any other organisation and which underlines the need for proper accountability. The undertaking that I want to refer to was given on the last day of the last Parliament, 24 May. I quote the relevant passage:

“The Crown as landlord, will, subject to the conditions described below, agree to the enfranchisement or extension of residential long leases or to the grant of new residential long leases under the same qualifications and terms which will apply by virtue of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, to lessees who hold from other landlords”.—[Official Report, 24/5/24; col. 1368.]


The 1993 Act was one that I put on the statute book as a Housing Minister in the other place. The Crown gave me a similar undertaking to the one that I have just read out, which I relayed to the other place at the time. However, there is evidence that the Crown Estate is not abiding by that undertaking in respect of freeholds for which it now has a responsibility under a process known as escheat. I will summarise as briefly as I can the reason for that assertion.

The freeholder of a block of flats in Southampton could not be traced, and initially an encouraging dialogue was opened on behalf of the leaseholders with the bona vacantia division of the Treasury. It confirmed that it would be happy to sell the freehold to them as qualifying tenants and pointed them to the so-called BVC4 formula on the government website, which details the procedure compliant with the relevant legislation. That formula calculated the cost of buying the freehold, as a multiple of the ground rent and the leases that remain, as £17,850.

However, this encouraging dialogue with the Treasury Solicitor was abruptly terminated, as it was stated that the liquidator had disclaimed the asset and it was now vested in the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate in turn appointed Burges Salmon, which responded to the leaseholders by saying that it did all the Crown Estate work regarding enfranchisement and collective freehold purchases and that:

“We consider that a disposal of the Property might be possible in this instance”.


There was no reference to the undertaking I gave a moment ago. Burges Salmon would do nothing before £750 was paid to open a file. It further advised that the government BVC4 formula did not apply to the Crown Estate, saying that:

“It is not obliged to follow guidance from the Bona Vacantia Division as that is a separate entity and we have dealt with this matter in this way for many years”.


That was again in defiance of the undertaking.

In addition to its fees, Carter Jonas would be instructed to provide the price at which the Crown Estate would sell, with all fees to be paid in full by the tenants. The total cost would be over £60,000, over four times the figure produced by the BVC4 formula in the legislation, which requires no valuation, and a contribution of only some £600 would have been made to the costs of the solicitor at the Treasury. I do not think that can be reconciled with the undertaking given to Parliament. Nor can it be right that leaseholders had certain rights under their original freeholder but lose those rights when the freehold defaults to the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate might argue it has a duty to secure best value, but that cannot override the clear undertaking I have given. There is now deadlock, causing problems for leaseholders who need to sell. As Burges Salmon conceded in a letter:

“Where a block of flats is subject to escheat lessees will generally be unable to sell”.


I note that when the Crown Estate gave evidence to a Treasury Select Committee in 2017, the then chief executive said on escheat:

“The Crown Estate’s role in respect of escheat properties is pretty narrow; it is limited to helping to respond to an owner who comes along and basically getting them back into private hands”.


She went on to concede that

“I do not think we are best placed to deal with properties that are subject to escheat”.

That issue is not confined to the one I have just quoted from. A letter from the Crown Estate says:

“The sheer volume of properties which become subject to Escheat each year means that we outsource this work to Burges Salmon and Carter Jonas”.


Further, following the Grenfell tragedy and the Building Safety Act, which places responsibility for remediation on freeholders, many freeholders are likely to go bankrupt, in turn putting more properties into escheat.

So what should be done? I mentioned earlier that the Treasury is the sponsor department, and the relationship with the Treasury is set out in Framework Document: The Crown Estate of June 2023. This refers in paragraph 2.1 to the need for “good management”, and later to

“strong collaborative relationships with customers”

by the Crown Estate. Crucially, it also says that the Treasury shall

“inform The Crown Estate of relevant government policy in a timely manner”.

Government policy on enfranchisement has been clear for many years. It is not being delivered, and I hope the Minister will use his powers to put right the injustice I have referred to.