Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could ask the Secretary of State that question, because it was his then policy adviser who led the campaign against it.

In all fairness to the Secretary of State, we were relieved to see the back of a planning framework that seemed to be based on a traffic light system. Our communities deserved far better than that. However, this Bill, as he has heard from colleagues on both sides of the House, allows neighbourhood plans to be overridden when they conflict with a national development management plan. The Secretary of State can make one of those plans at any time—without consultation if he chooses, and without any approval from a single Member of this House—and he can override people in any one of our communities if their plan conflicts with his to any extent. That is not being serious about handing power to local communities, is it?

The press release that accompanied the Bill said that the big idea behind handing power to local communities—notwithstanding that the Bill includes measures that allow Whitehall to override them—is something that the Secretary of State calls “street votes”. Will he explain exactly what those street votes will do to put power in people’s hands and put them in the driving seat of their own communities? The reason I ask is that, if he has a plan, it is not, unfortunately, in the Bill. How is it possible that that flagship idea, which headlined the press release, has not yet been written? Does he not accept that we are entitled to better than plans drawn up on the back of an envelope after horse-trading has taken place, usually to his detriment, behind closed doors in Whitehall?

The Secretary of State says that he wants beautiful communities that work for people, and I agree with him, but that means that we have to put power back into people’s hands, because people who have a stake in their own communities and who have skin in the game will do more, try harder, work for longer and be more creative in order to build thriving communities. It also means that we have to end the system where people can come to our communities and extract from them, taking our wealth, running down our housing and sitting on our land.

Surely the most basic plank of all this is that people have the right to know who owns their town, village or city. However, the measures in the Bill that try to ensure that more information is collected about land ownership also allow the Secretary of State to withhold that information from communities. Why on earth would a Secretary of State want to deny people in our villages, towns and cities the right to know who owns the housing, land, shopping centres and town centres that make up those beautiful places that we call home? I remind him that it was that great Conservative—also a great radical—John Ruskin who said:

“Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.”

The commitment to beauty in this Bill is not true.

We need a serious plan to tilt the balance of power back in favour of the people who built this country and will do so again, who have stake in the outcome and skin in the game. We have debated the problems they face many times in this Chamber—

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Lisa Nandy]

If I am not mistaken, my hon. Friend is about to raise one of them, so I give way to him.

[Matt Rodda]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. She is absolutely right to highlight the very poorly designed planning system and the failure of the current proposals to change anything. In my area, there are enormous pressures on land and terrible pressures on green spaces, yet brownfield land in the south of England is not being redeveloped as it should be. When it is redeveloped, it is not done appropriately, and local needs and local authorities are not listened to as much as they should be. Does she agree that there needs to be a complete rethink of that imbalance?

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who reminds us that we have had 12 long years without real action to put power back in people’s hands. He raises a really important point—I think all Members have raised it: that, as long as there are centralising tendencies in Government, and as long as they find their way into Bills such as this, we will continue to undermine the situation. If the Secretary of State does not want to listen to Opposition Members, I urge him to listen to Members on his own side; looking at their faces, I do not believe they will allow this to drop.

We have debated the problems that people face in this House many times. There are simple changes that the Secretary of State could make in order to stop people coming into our communities and extracting from them.

Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I accept that it is meant to be in the spirit of being helpful and adding to the debate, but the idea that criminal enterprises currently lining their pockets with our constituents’ money will be put off exploiting this business model because of a national statement of expectation is absolutely for the birds. I am sorry, but that will not work here. If it did, I would support it, because I want this problem fixed. I am desperate to see vulnerable people no longer being exploited and communities no longer being destroyed, but that measure will not cut it. These are proper operators and they have spotted a loophole in the law. They have calculated correctly that, instead of going further into the drugs business where they might have to do 20 years in prison, they can just get into the housing sector and no one will put them away for it—at all. In fact, they can do so in plain sight and nobody can do a thing about it. That is what I want the Government to take action on, because that is what I have seen in my own constituency of Birmingham, Ladywood. That is what my colleagues in Birmingham have seen in their constituencies, and some of them have truly horrific examples of abuse of vulnerable tenants.

We are seeing that problem all across the country. I was very grateful to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) for saying that this is national issue. It can become a little too easy for Members in this place to think that this is a problem for some cities—let us be honest, if we are to be party political about this, it is problem for some Labour-run cities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, piecemeal action—a pilot here and a little bit of a change there—just creates a whack-a-mole system. A problem that starts in Birmingham will soon spread to Sandwell, to Stoke and then to Dudley, and to other places too, unless we have a national change in the law of our land that stops the problem dead for everybody. Then, a Member whose constituency is currently not afflicted by it would not have to worry about a proliferation of exempt accommodation taking place in their patch. If they do have it in their constituency already, they could at least see that there was an end in sight to this absolute abuse of the system, which, as Mr Deputy Speaker can tell, leaves most of us utterly impotent with rage because, unless the Government change the law, we can simply not fix this problem.

The first area of the law that requires change is the “more than minimal” test, which has been discussed today. The Minister made the point that the “more than minimal” requirement for the access to enhanced housing benefit regulations has come about as a matter of case law. He is, of course, right; that was done by a housing benefit tribunal. In this country, though, we do not distinguish between case law and Acts of Parliament or statutory instruments. The law is the law and if a judicial authority—a judge or a tribunal—comes to a clarification or a statement of the law that is against what the Government expect to happen, all that creates is a system that is open to abuse. It is the job of this legislature, this House of Commons, to put it right, and only the Government have the power to introduce that legislation to make it so. That rule—the “more than minimal” requirement—must be changed. It must be tightened up.

I do not buy the argument that, somehow, tightening up the access to enhanced housing benefit will somehow drive the good providers out of the sector. That is also for the birds. Those providers are already doing the things that are required in order to help vulnerable people turn their lives around. In the end, that is the thing in which we should all be interested. These are people who have escaped abusive relationships, who have come out of the prison system and are desperate to turn their lives around, and who have had addiction issues and need help to turn their lives around. They need good quality housing in order to do that. The hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) was right when he said that people should be sentenced to a house so that they can have stability—the stability that is required to help them turn their life around and become a citizen able to play their full part in society once more. That is not possible if the rogue operators get their hands on these people first. The good providers, who have a moral and a social mission when it comes to supported housing, will already be doing the right thing. I do not buy the idea that they will be pushed out of the system if the regulations for access to the cash in the first place are tightened up.

The Government and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in particular, rather than the Department for Work and Pensions, need to tighten up the broader regulatory framework. It should not be possible to be providing housing to some of the most vulnerable people in our country and to not even have to pass some sort of character test. The idea that the good providers who are operating will fail fit and proper persons tests is a joke. They will pass it because they have a social, moral mission and they can prove their track record in helping people to turn their lives around. If they do not pass it, they should not have access to vulnerable people in the first place. We know what happens when vulnerable people get into bad accommodation: they are ripe for further abuse, ripe for further grooming into drug activity, and ripe for further grooming into sexual exploitation. We should not allow any provider who cannot pass a fit and proper person’s test to get anywhere near some of these people because they will exacerbate the problem rather than alleviate it. Frankly, I have no sympathy with anyone who we currently think of as a good provider but who ends up failing that test, because it proves they were not a good provider in the first place.

We also need more powers for local authorities—a point that was also raised earlier in the debate—to prevent the dumping of problem people from one part of a country to another. I accept that there are some classes of vulnerable individuals who need to break the link with their local area if they are going to turn their lives around, but that is not the case for the vast majority of people who have ended up in exempt supported accommodation.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She speaks from deep experience and her legal background stands her in good stead on these important matters. Does she agree that this is part of a series of problems where the Government have got the emphasis quite wrong in their housing policy? They have not given enough powers to local government, they have not regulated the system enough and they have allowed exactly the wrong type of landlords to drive a coach and horses through what limited regulation there is. In many ways, that reflects a bigger picture, not only of the poor vulnerable people who are being mistreated, but of a lack of emphasis on council housing and a lack of regulation of private rented accommodation. The whole system needs a complete rethink and Ministers need to listen to what my hon. Friend is saying.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend that we need a system-wide approach. Local authorities need the power to reject applications for exempt accommodation on the grounds of saturation or oversupply. We must break the habit of putting huge amounts of need into already stretched areas and then wondering why those areas can never recover. We wonder why people who have raised their families and committed themselves to stable communities in modest properties that they are proud of, whether they are socially renting or have managed to become owner-occupiers, are so desperate to leave the areas that they were committed to, when we have loaded all sorts of high need into those areas and provided none of the services to support them.

People dumping has to stop, over-saturation has to stop and local authorities need the power to prevent an over-saturation of supply. We need community impact assessments before we get large numbers of exempt supported accommodation across our different communities, to ensure we are not loading more need into already difficult areas.

As I said earlier, the vast majority of tenants in exempt accommodation should be able to demonstrate some sort of local link to the area. Unless it is a requirement because of a prison or domestic violence-related issue, most people need some such link in order to have the stability to turn their lives around.

Finally, we need an inspections regime. We need to keep providers on their toes so that it is not the case that once someone has accessed the system, nobody will ever ask them questions again. There should be at least an annual check to ensure that people who have access to vulnerable tenants and taxpayer cash are doing the thing they said they would do and fulfilling the promises they made.

Only with Government action can we turn the dial on a huge problem that affects not only my constituency, but people all across this country. Our communities deserve nothing less. When the Minister stands to close this debate, I hope he will not simply say, “We’re watching, and we’re waiting and seeing, and we’re going to think about what we’re going to do,” but give us a legislative timetable for making the changes that are needed.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a real honour to be able to contribute to this debate today. It is not only an essential time for remembrance and learning but an important time of reflection on the current shape of our society and the direction the world is taking.

We have heard some incredibly powerful and emotive speeches from hon. Members of all parties. Many others have shared their thoughts, as I did, when we signed the Holocaust Education Trust’s book of commitment this week. I pay tribute to its, and others’, vital work to ensure that the atrocities that took place are never forgotten and that the horrors of the holocaust that we saw in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which was liberated 77 years ago to this very day, are never repeated.

It was a true privilege to hear from all those who spoke today. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) for his incredibly powerful speech. To speak from personal experience is never easy, especially in this place, but I know his words will have had a powerful impact far beyond this House. I thank the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) for speaking out about the shameful rise in antisemitism in this country and for sharing his own personal experience of antisemitism that no one should be on the receiving end of. My thoughts and solidarity are with him and his family. We have heard many powerful accounts. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown) shared Rena’s testimony, which was one of courage beyond her young years. We could all learn from that and renew our efforts to stop more children experiencing the horror that Rena did.

I am especially thankful to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for highlighting that alongside the 6 million Jews that were killed, Roma and Gypsy people, Slavic people, LGBT communities, the disabled and religious and political minorities were also targeted by this fascist regime. I will not forget the words that she shared with us. They were so incredibly powerful and I am so proud to call her my friend. She is absolutely right when she says that memorialisation must lead to action. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) laid out some of the actions that we could be taking, particularly in challenging fake news and online hate on social media. That is key to fighting the abhorrent rise of antisemitism, but also Islamophobia. Genocide, as we have heard so many times today, starts with the othering of people that she spoke of. It is that othering of people that leads to the horrors experienced by the Bosnian Muslim families that the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) so eloquently spoke of.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I want to offer my wholehearted support to my hon. Friend and to say how moving I have found her speech and indeed the other speeches that I have been here for today. I also wholeheartedly support the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the work of the local Jewish community in Reading and Woodley. I am afraid that, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), I have had to be in a Committee today. I apologise for that, but I would like to offer my support, once again, for this debate and say how moving it has been. I am sure that colleagues across the House feel the same way.

[Sarah Owen]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and echo his sentiments. We heard some really impassioned and powerful speeches today, but I know that many other Members across the House would have wished to be here to speak.

I am sure we all join my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) in her commitment to remember the 1.5 million Armenian people killed and to recognise that atrocity and evil act. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) said, these evil acts impact people like Bill for many, many years to come. The impact of the holocaust is felt through generations, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West said, so we must protect future generations from this horror.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) is absolutely right that we must be vigilant and act at the first signs of any potential genocide. We must also remember the atrocities that have taken place across the world, including the murder of 100,000 people in Babi Yar, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) spoke about so eloquently. I thank him for sharing the powerful lessons from the Kindertransport children.

As my wonderful friends, the hon. Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) and for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, antisemitism is not an historic problem, but, sadly, a scourge in our modern-day society that we can only beat together. As we have heard in so many speeches, memorials often bring people together. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) spoke from the heart when she talked about the peace garden in her constituency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West said, these memorials exist not just to remember the dead, but as a sign of resilience.

My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) was absolutely right to talk from her considerable experience about the shock waves of pain caused by genocide, particularly the shock waves felt by children, so it was very fitting that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) paid such a lovely tribute to the inspirational Lord Dubs from whom we have much to learn.

I know that the original sponsor of today’s debate could not join us, so let me take this moment to pay tribute also to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and thank her for her years of dedication in fighting the far right—the same extremism and fascism that committed the atrocities some 80 years ago, but just under a different guise.

I echo the pledge that others have made today to fight racism and prejudice wherever they are found. I stand in solidarity with Members on both sides of the House in that commitment, as does the Labour party. Wherever and whenever we see the poison of division and hatred raise its ugly head, we must address it, even when it is uncomfortably close to home, which is why our party’s move to a new independent complaints process has been welcomed by many. It involved extensive engagement with the Jewish Labour movement and the Jewish community, and it is an important step in showing that Labour is, and always will be, the party of equality.

Just as they did then, many decades ago, people, sadly, still need a voice of equality and diversity in the face of tyranny and fascism. Tragically, world leaders are not learning the lessons of the past fast enough. We see that, as we stare at the horror of genocide currently taking place in Xinjiang against the Uyghur Muslims and the more recent genocides that have taken place in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur and against the Yazidi and Rohingya, which we are all remembering here today. It is why the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day 2022—One Day—is so sadly fitting. It brings us together not only to remember the 6 million Jews who were killed, but to look forward to a future when, one day, there will be no more genocides and no more war.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust sums it up best when it says:

“We learn more about the past, we empathise with others today, and we take action for a better future.”

I believe that we can have a better future, but it will not come without courage—the courage to stand up to tyranny and oppression wherever we see it, whether that be through diplomacy, through trade measures such as the genocide amendment, or by standing shoulder to shoulder with those who are oppressed simply because of who they are—because that one day, when there is no longer war or genocide, will always be worth striving for.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. On new clause 1, I do not think there is any argument that we need to look at historical leaseholds. However, my constituency has lots of new build and regeneration going on, and a lot of leasehold properties being built, and I am not convinced that that investment would come forward if the developers did not see where that income stream would come from, including pensions and so on. A lot of evidence is going back and forth, but I disagree just on that point.

I completely agree on the historical leasehold issue. The real problem is in the myriad different leases that are out there and have been for many years. I read the Select Committee report referred to by its Chair, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), a moment ago, and I found some of the things that lawyers were doing astonishing. It fascinates me how they ever got insured and how they have not been struck off—I know that other investigations are going on. This is about not just ground rent but service charges and buildings insurance, which is an issue we must address, whether in this Bill or another measure.

I own a freehold property with a mortgage, and I have contents and buildings insurance. In my buildings insurance, I have legal protection of the sort that we would expect our constituents to benefit from when they pay for buildings insurance. However, those in leasehold properties must pay buildings insurance to the freeholder or their management company and have no choice whatsoever about the company, what the premium is or what the coverage is. I use an example from my own constituency of what happens when a claim is made. We had a large sinkhole in a housing development where there were leaseholders: I sat in a meeting with the insurance representative, the freeholder and my leaseholder constituents, and the insurance company said straight to me, absolutely deadpan, “Your constituents may well have paid the premium, but the policy is not theirs. They have no cover whatsoever—the cover is for the freeholder.”

There has to be something morally wrong about that. Insurance has developed over the years; it used to cover very few things, but these days nearly all buildings insurance worth its salt has legal protection. That is what it says on the tin. The Bill does not cover that in the way I think it should. Sometimes it is wrapped into the service charges and everything else, and the ground rent is part of that package, but at the same time we have houses with historical freeholds, some of them from the old military estates where people have bought properties on what used to be Ministry of Defence property, and they are paying leasehold rents on what everybody assumed was a freehold property. Something is structurally wrong.

There was an allusion earlier to looking forward rather than back. I say to the Minister that looking forward is fantastic—we need some dates and some targets that our constituents can look forward to—but we should not rule out looking back just because it is difficult. As I said on the Building Safety Bill in this House only last week, looking back because it is difficult is what this House is supposed to do. It will be more difficult to look back and bring in those leaseholders, our constituents, who feel left out of this legislation and still very vulnerable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) said, but it can be done.

This is not a case of, “It’s impossible”, because we are doing it retrospectively in the Building Safety Bill. We are going back 30-odd years retrospectively on that Bill. Can the Minister explain, when he sums up on new clause 1, why the Government feel that that is so difficult, when we are doing it on a separate piece of legislation that is going through the House today?

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I express my support for new clause 1; I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), and to others across the House, for their words tonight and for pointing out the enormous imbalance between powerful developers on the one hand and people buying a property for themselves, who possibly do not have all the information before them that ideally they should, on the other.

I refer to an issue in my own constituency, an attractive modern development on the edge of the town of Woodley, which is part of my Reading East constituency. The Loddon Park development is relatively recent, but there is a clear need for action to be taken. This development is in the south-east of England, a different part of the country from many of the developments mentioned tonight, and while there are some similarities there are also some differences.

Loddon Park is an attractive new estate, built in the past few years in parkland on the edge of Woodley. There are several hundred properties, a mixture of owner-occupied and some social housing. There are many attractive ponds and features, including meadowland, in the development. Unfortunately, when the whole development was given planning permission, the local authority—mistakenly, I believe—allowed the site developer to charge upkeep for those common areas in perpetuity. There is no limit, as I understand it, to the charge that can be made. It is deeply unfair for normal householders—many of them have young families, are commuters who work locally and are facing, like many people across the country, significant rises in the cost of living—to face in addition ongoing costs for maintaining the landscape around their homes. Frankly, that is wrong.

I hope the Minister will consider new clause 1. We have heard arguments from many MPs across the House and from different places around the country, whether in the south or the north of England; we have heard from the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who set out some powerful legal arguments for why this action should be considered. I hope the Minister will look at it again, even at this stage, and will consider further action by the Government and our new clause.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to make a contribution in such debates, and it is nice to be here. When we look at amendment 1 and the reasons why the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) tabled it, as he expressed in his contribution, it is hard to say that we should not support it.

We must make sure that there is financial fairness for leaseholders, especially long leaseholders who plan to hold a lease for more than 21 years. The issue of ground rent payment has been brought to my attention by my constituents, and the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) rightly gave an example of his constituents. An elderly couple in my constituency, who paid their mortgage off more than 15 years ago, are still paying ground rent of more than £50 a year. Although that is not much, I am pleased that the need to abolish this has been recognised. We already changed the legislation in Northern Ireland, so I understand why this Minister and Government are looking forward to making these changes tonight. Many Members have stated that many people have long leases with higher ground rents at the start of their lease, with shorter ground rent review periods. As a result, leaseholders face unsustainable ground rents, so there is a real need to change this, as hon. Members have said.

Leaseholders with high or escalating ground rents will often struggle to remortgage or sell their houses, leaving them in greater financial distress. The Bill aims to restrict ground rents on newly created long residential leases, with some exceptions, to a token of one peppercorn a year. That effectively restricts ground rents to zero financial value. The intention is to make leasehold ownership fair and more affordable for leaseholders. We should support that purpose.

In Northern Ireland, individuals can apply to the Land Registry to buy out their ground rent. In some cases, the individuals cannot afford to pay the substantial sum outright, so I am pleased that the Bill has assurances for long leaseholders and that Government have protected householders. If ground rent is demanded in contravention of the Bill and any payment received is not returned in 28 days, the landlord will face a fine ranging from £500 to £30,000 per qualifying lease. The fines are clear and hopefully prohibitive.

However, there is one substantial problem with the Bill, as others have said: it will apply only to new leases and will not assist existing leaseholders faced with high and escalating ground rents. I feel that they should not be left behind and I would be grateful if the Minister clarified this matter, looked at it again and considered the impact that the situation has not only on finance, but the possibility of remortgaging or selling property.

The Bill’s commencement date has also raised concerns across the House, so I would be grateful if more clarity was given about that. A Bill on broader leasehold reform is expected in the third Session of this Parliament and I would encourage discussion and a closer look at how the situation can be improved to make circumstances easier for leaseholders. Others have said that we just need a wee bit more movement, and perhaps that can be done in the next Session.

Building Safety Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

As introduced, the Bill proposed to retrospectively and prospectively extend the limitation period to 15 years, meaning that it would not only apply going forward, but that it would be possible to bring a claim with respect to buildings completed from mid-2007 onwards, should the building have been constructed in such a way as to make it unfit for habitation.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I ask for the Minister’s further reassurance on some points of detail that relate to these amendments. First, around half of the buildings in my constituency that have difficulties associated with them have non-cladding-related problems. Those include internal compartmentalisation that has been improperly finished. Indeed, in Queens Wharf in Reading town centre, the building owners estimate that nearly £1 million of work needs to be carried out. These are often very large sums. In other cases, the problem is wooden cladding, wooden balconies or a range of other things. Do the amendments relate to these problems, or to flammable cladding only?

[Christopher Pincher]

The Defective Premises Act has been in effect since 1972, so there is a significant body of case law that those wishing to bring an action, and indeed the courts, will be able to refer to, to determine whether a premises is defective and therefore whether an action should be successful. I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with further detail, but I can assure him that the Act is of long standing and has been well used, and there is a body of case law that can be applied.

--- Later in debate ---

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

Let me begin by paying tribute to my constituents and the community of north Kensington.

I welcome the Bill, and I welcomed last week’s announcements that leaseholders in intermediate buildings would not have to pay for the remediation of cladding and other fire safety defects. I understand from the Minister that this will be incorporated in legislation in the other place. I want to stress how crucial it is that we get that right: it is critically important that we have robust legal protection for leaseholders. I welcome the statement that those on the Front Bench will listen to all good ideas, but it is important for us to be able to put this into practice quickly and effectively. I ask the Minister, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), to ensure that when the Bill comes back to this place, there is the opportunity for full debate and full scrutiny.

A number of Members said that some developers and freeholders have been behaving very badly, and I have such a situation in my constituency. Leaseholders in Collier House have paid for the remediation and the building is eligible for an existing fund, yet the building owner, outrageously, will not apply for those moneys. He does not want to get involved because the leaseholders have already paid. Such situations are clearly wrong in terms of how people should behave. I ask the Minister, as colleagues have, to ensure that we look to remedy situations where leaseholders have paid and take that into consideration. We need to find solutions, because they paid thinking that they were doing the right thing, and they may now be out of pocket as a result.

In conclusion, I very much welcome the direction of travel. However, it will be critically important to get the proposals right in the other place, and I ask that we have the opportunity for full scrutiny of what the other place decides.

[Matt Rodda]

I offer my support to the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan). My thoughts are still with her community five years after the disaster. I am sure that the whole House would echo that support for her community.

I also thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene and for partially addressing my points. However, I want to expand on them, because they are very relevant to our discussions. The challenges for many people in my community will come from the sheer complexity of the situation. It is extremely stressful for many leaseholders and tenants, as Members across the House have said. It is very difficult for them to live in buildings with enormous problems. In many cases, they have suffered from these problems for some years, living in a period of prolonged stress and difficulty—both emotional and financial stress—and I look forward to working with the Minister and the Government to try to deal with this very serious problem.

I will highlight some of the practical difficulties that we need to tackle, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), mentioned. The great difficulty for many residents in my constituency and others is that the routes to redress are limited. In many cases, the legal route that the Minister outlined will be extremely difficult.

Perhaps I can describe the type of blocks that I am referring to. Many of the cases in Reading and in Woodley—a town next to the main town of Reading—involve low-rise blocks, so there has been a delay because they are lower- rise. There are problems from issues other than cladding, and many tenants and leaseholders live in these blocks. In one of the biggest neighbourhoods in Reading, there is a large area called Chatham Place, with a series of blocks and a series of different problems, including wooden cladding, balconies and a range of other things. There is also a combination of leaseholders and social housing tenants in the same block. There are multiple problems, and the Minister is right to explore the legal route to redress, but there are very serious challenges because of the difficulty of getting a group of people together to take action and of tracing the legal entities, companies, developers—in some cases, the developers are overseas—architects and the range of others involved. I ask the Minister to work with Opposition Members to look at the issue again and explore other avenues for toughening up the Bill. I look forward to the Lords amendments and I ask him to come back and look at this Bill again in more detail.

I wish to make two other points, also on behalf of local authorities and housing associations. The first point, which was raised with me by a local council that represents a town centre ward in Reading, was the difficulty, even now, for local authority officers to understand the exact guidance on different types of cladding. The issue of flammable insulation in walls was raised with me and there does not seem to be a clear answer on that. Secondly, in my area, housing associations were some of the first building owners to take action. However, as was rightly mentioned, these housing associations and their tenants could inadvertently be penalised. Please will the Minister look into that and provide reassurance?

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I do not disagree in any way. The north-west was particularly targeted, for reasons that I do not understand, with tens of thousands of homes built in this manner. It really was disgraceful. It gave leasehold a very bad name and necessitated these changes and others that will be introduced in future. The Bill ends these practices for new properties; that is key. It will ensure that the business model behind ground rents—the creation of such properties as leasehold to benefit commercially—will come to an end. We are already seeing its gradual reduction, and the Bill will lead to its elimination.

I want to address the point that was raised about why the proposals should be extended to retirement properties. As Secretary of State, I came under fierce resistance and lobbying from the retirement property sector. Its lobbyists approached Members of Parliament and my Department and threatened judicial review of our proceedings. I considered it to be an unfair practice, targeted at the most elderly and vulnerable in our society, that in addition to paying their service charge they should pay a ground rent that might escalate at a significant pace. Why not have a fairer and more transparent system where an elderly person knows exactly what they are getting when they pay the purchase price on their property and then when they pay the service charge on an annual basis, instead of receiving two bills every year? I think that is a simple matter of fairness and transparency, and it was the right decision to bring that to an end. We did, however, give a longer period for businesses to transition and to change their business model, which is why that part of the industry will not feel the force of the Bill until 2023.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I appreciate the work that the right hon. Gentleman has done to try to get the right balance and stand up for the interests of homeowners rather than large corporations. Does he have any reflection, further to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), on the knock-on effects of allowing additional storeys to be built on existing blocks of flats? In my experience, there is an exploitation issue both for people who live in flats with top-hatted development—I think that is the word—and for the neighbours. In the area that I represent, there have certainly been a number of problems for neighbours to those blocks. Does the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) have any further reflections on that point? If he were still Secretary of State, would he have allowed that development to go ahead?

[Robert Jenrick]

I think it should be kept under review, like any permitted development. As we have seen with past examples, there are always cases at the edges that concern us, and there are usually ways to refine the permitted development over time to ensure that those cases do not happen again. With the permitted development that the hon. Gentleman mentions, I think—from memory —that we ensured that the developer has to work with the local council to ensure that there are not issues with building safety or loss of amenity to the leaseholders in the building, and that the design of the extra storeys is broadly in keeping with the neighbourhood. I certainly think that the issue should be kept under review.

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[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Let me first put it on record that, alongside the hon. Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), l am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform. The group is assisted by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which has been campaigning for many years for the kind of reform that we are debating today.

We might have expected the Bill to be a cause for celebration, and indeed any legislation that puts another nail in the coffin of leasehold is to be welcomed, but we are left with a feeling that it is a rather modest measure. Given that it took four years for us to reach this point, it seems that we are making glacial progress. Perhaps four years is not much in comparison with 1,000 years of leasehold, but for those who are still trapped in unsellable or seriously devalued homes because of the leases they signed, progress is not being made quickly enough.

I am not generally a fan of market-based solutions—the market is responsible for most of the egregious injustices that we have seen in leasehold—but, to a significant extent, the market has already moved away from imposing ground rents for most houses, not because those who concocted the leasehold scandal have had a prick of conscience but because a spotlight has been shone on the devastating consequences of their sharp practice. In that respect, I pay tribute to the fantastic work of the National Leasehold Campaign, which has done more than just about anyone to bring the unfairness of leasehold to the public’s attention. It is an irony that those campaigners do not stand to benefit from the Bill because, as has been pointed out already, it does nothing to tackle the existing problems. That said, however, their influence has already benefited my constituents and many others.

A new Redrow estate not far from where I live originally had properties being sold on a leasehold basis. After some pretty determined campaigning from the National Leasehold Campaign, Redrow decided to stop the sale of homes in the second phase as leasehold, but unfortunately not before several hundred people had already bought their homes as leasehold. To be fair to Redrow, I should add that it did then offer them the opportunity to purchase the freehold after two years, although it was a little unfortunate, to say the least, when it subsequently lowered the purchase price for the freehold again, creating another unfairness. While I give Redrow credit for stepping back and weaning itself off the leasehold drug, that should not obscure the fact that all this could have been avoided had it not sold the properties as leasehold in the first place. That takes me back to the basic concern that remains with the Bill, which is that it enshrines in law a two-tier system of home ownership when really we should be ending it altogether.

Very few new houses are now being sold as leasehold, but around 1.5 million houses will remain leasehold after this Bill becomes law. Is there a risk that choking off income streams from those who see other people’s homes as an investment will cause them to turn their attention to redoubling their efforts to squeeze as much as they can out of the existing properties? A number of Members have already mentioned that, and I will return to it later.

Turning to the details of the Bill, I know that a lot of consideration has been given to how we define a ground rent. That debate is instructive, because how can a payment for which nothing is received in return be considered a proper legal payment? The short answer is that it cannot, and I believe that that is another reason to abolish leasehold altogether. The reality is that ground rent is a legal fiction and a method of maintaining control and securing an income for which the recipient is required to do precisely nothing.

It is therefore disappointing that lease extensions for houses are exempt from the Bill, because there is significant concern that freeholders will put in massive multipliers when offering informal lease extensions, just to make the premium look lower and more attractive. They would then make their money back through allowing the ground rents to continue. Let us not forget that both parties do not have equal bargaining power. This all just adds weight to the argument that what we have here is a minor change that will help people in the future, when what we really need to do is to deal with the injustices of the present, and the best way to do that is of course to abolish leasehold altogether.

As I said earlier, we also need to keep an eye on whether those who have been involved in the systematic deception and mis-selling change their sights to deal with the new environment that the Bill represents. They have not gone away, those offshore accounts, those trust funds and those private equity investors who see people’s homes as an opportunity to cream off the cash long after the people living in them think that they have bought them. In particular, we have to keep a close eye on estate management companies, because that is one area in which charges could easily be inflated to more than cover the loss of a ground rent.

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech and he has hit on a number of central issues, particularly when dealing with his own legal experience of these dysfunctional markets where on the one hand we have developers with enormous financial power and legal resources and on the other we have humble first-time buyers. Does he agree that there needs to be a rebalancing, with far greater protection for first-time buyers and ordinary householders, and with a much greater attempt by the Government to hold these large developers to account?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is clearly an imbalance. We have already talked about how some enthusiastic first-time buyers who just want to get into their new homes put their trust in the people who have been assigned to deliver the legal niceties such as putting a value on the property and doing the conveyancing. They put their trust in those people, and sometimes that trust is betrayed through the egregious injustices that we have talked about.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in tonight’s debate. I wish not only to address a number of issues that colleagues have raised, but to add in further details that I hope are particular to my constituency but fear may be common around the country.

First, I wish to support the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). Obviously, I welcome this Bill, which will help, but the broader point about the deep inequities of leasehold still stands true and we should be moving much faster on this important matter, trying to remove leasehold from the system of ownership in this country. Is it not incredible that the UK still has this medieval system of ownership, which, as has been mentioned, so discriminates against first-time buyers, people on lower incomes, older people and many other groups, which in many ways deserve more support and encouragement to get on to the property ladder? They deserve not to have their lives blighted by what is, sadly, sometimes the behaviour of irresponsible developers. I am not saying that all developers are irresponsible, but Members have clearly highlighted some awful and appalling examples of behaviour.

First, Loddon Park is a pleasant development on the edge of Woodley, a suburb of Reading. It is a relatively new and really quite beautiful development, with many attractive homes. The homes are freehold properties but some of the shared areas in the large development are subject to charges. In many ways, the sort of problems described so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) are also occurring for those at Loddon Park—several hundred people living in an attractive new development on the edge of an urban area in the south-east of England. The residents potentially face unlimited extra costs for the maintenance of some attractive grounds—including meadow areas, large ponds and other areas where children can play—because no cap was written into the charging policy and they did not realise that when they bought their properties.

As explained earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), as well as other colleagues, some of the first-time buyers we are talking about are unfortunately not always aware of some of the difficulties into which they might get themselves. There is an unequal situation in which on the one hand there are powerful and articulate developers with an excellent team of lawyers and on the other hand there are first-time buyers. That is deeply unfair. In this case, young families face potentially unlimited additional costs to pay for the upkeep of the rather attractive communal areas around their houses. That is very sad and deeply unfair. I respect the fact that the local authority had difficulties in trying to provide the properties, but I wish it had been more careful. There is also an element of involvement from Wokingham Borough Council, which is the local authority involved. Will the Minister look into that issue? I will write to him to explain the situation and ask for his help and support.

Before I mention another egregious example from the Reading East constituency, I offer my support to colleagues who have mentioned the issue of snagging and the problems with developers that prevent the adoption of roads. I know of cases in both Reading borough and Wokingham borough in which different developers have started to build a new estate and completed all the properties, which have been sold, but the roads, street lighting and other services have not been properly completed. Although the issue has gone on for years, there has been an ongoing tussle—similar to what the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned—between council officers and developers. It has been deeply problematic for local authorities, which often have low levels of resource in their planning departments so are not well equipped to argue the case.

[Mark Tami]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Quite often, the moment the developers sell the last property, that is it: they are not interested any more. They are not interested in snagging or doing the roads; they are off to build somewhere else. The problem is that, as my hon. Friend was saying, local authorities do not have the money to chase these people. In my opinion, if they do not finish an estate—what they were allowed to do under the planning permission—they should not be granted permission again to build anything else.

[Matt Rodda]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There should be much stricter rules on this issue, because such sharp practice by developers helps no one. It does not help the building industry as whole, homeowners, local authorities or, indeed, other businesses that have to operate. In one estate near me, drivers can feel the difference as they drive on to the unadopted piece of road because their vehicle goes over a huge bump. That is not good for anyone, including many of the small businesses that have to deliver to that estate. It is surely in everybody’s interests, including those of the wider building industry, to get on with it and come up with a clear, simple and fair solution to the problem so that we can all move on and not spend vast amounts of unnecessary energy chasing after developers to sort out problems such as lamp posts that do not work or roads that have not been finished off.

I wish to address a specific issue that relates to a social housing enterprise in my constituency that operates across large parts of Berkshire. I have been deeply disappointed by Housing Solutions and ask for the Minister’s help. This organisation appears to have badly let down a number of residents in Woodley, the Reading suburb I mentioned earlier. It applied for planning permission to build properties next to a transport depot, where there are a lot of heavy goods vehicle movements, and on an industrial estate. The properties have been sold in a part-ownership scheme to local residents who were desperate to get on the housing ladder and were finding it quite difficult because they are on modest incomes. The local authority gave planning permission and carried out all the relevant checks—again, this is Wokingham Borough Council not Reading Borough Council. There was nothing in planning law to stop these flats from being built next to a haulage yard. The local authority looked into it and it was not able to reject the plans on that basis—on the basis that the flats were close to a noisy and polluting business. However, it did try to insist on conditions on the development. Sadly, though, it appears from lengthy inquiries from my office and also from one of the local councillors—Councillor Shirley Boyt—that these conditions have not been met. Residents, including a constituent of mine, Elise Maslen, who lives in the development, were not told of the additional changes that would need to be made to these properties—in particular, the need to adapt to air quality problems, such as mechanical ventilation and other forms of enhancements to the properties. They were also not told about the noise and pollution from the depot when they purchased the properties. That has resulted in around 20 families being trapped in flats that they do not want to be in, suffering from noise and air pollution.

The local authority has tried to find a way of bringing these properties up to spec. It has insisted on Housing Solutions doing that, but there has been a great deal of delay. This has gone on for five or six years. Sadly, some of the residents have moved away and are now having to pay for the cost of living in these properties while also living at a new address. They are deeply concerned about the health of their children and of themselves. This seems to be an egregious abuse of the situation. While it is not directly related to leaseholders, it has many of the same features, with powerful organisations, sadly, abusing their position of power and ordinary householders struggling and being provided with incorrect information. I wish to write to the Minister to ask for his help on this matter because it is of huge concern to me, to the local community and to the residents concerned. They have been treated appallingly by the housing association.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some incredibly important points. I have parallels in my constituency, as I am sure do other Members across the House. In one example, we have a managing company, a massive social housing provider and a partnership scheme, as he describes it, and the builder. It is a big organisation, but there is no overall ownership of the issues. Residents get utterly frustrated—I am thinking about Ellie, Matt, Sarah and others. There are 200 of them in this one development and they cannot get answers from anybody because no one is really taking ownership of the problem.

[Matt Rodda]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he shows that there is a wider issue with this type of behaviour. It is deeply worrying. These are ordinary families trying to get on with their daily lives. They want to be able to find a home of their own in a high-cost area and they are being treated in the most appalling way by an organisation that should be much more responsible. As I have said, I, my office and local councillors have been struggling to find a way of solving this problem, but we have not had much success so far and would appreciate the Minister’s help. We hope that, at some point, Housing Solutions will compensate these poor residents for the way that they have been treated and, indeed, buy them out of their properties if possible. It is absolutely appalling to live next to a haulage yard. People are constantly interrupted by noise from HGVs, driving past at all hours of the day and night. The air pollution from diesel particulates and nitrous oxide is deeply worrying. There is no way of protecting children and other vulnerable people in that situation. I am sure the whole House would agree that no one wants that for their constituents. There is also an issue with planning law that needs to be addressed, by which I mean looking at the risks from air pollution and from putting housing in close proximity to an industrial development. I would appreciate the Minister’s help with that.

Finally, let me reiterate the points made by other colleagues about the wider issue of leasehold, which is a completely out-of-date system and totally unfair to first-time buyers and other householders—whether they be young residents, people in leasehold properties for long periods of time, or, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, older residents. This system should come to an end. It is a feudal system. Our country is unique in having such a system. Surely we need to end it once and for all and move on from it.

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[Theresa Villiers]

We would certainly need a cap, and the sort of levels that my hon. Friend mentions sound reasonable to me.

Let me turn to how this legislation will interact with new building safety laws. New building safety legislation will impose stringent responsibilities on freeholders, whether they are professionals or just flat owners who are banded together to manage their building. Frankly, not all leaseholders will want to take on such liabilities, yet this Bill will mean that for new flats, residents—whether they want this or not—will be jointly responsible for the safety, maintenance and upkeep of the apartment buildings in which they live, regardless of the size or complexity of those buildings. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) highlighted in his earlier intervention, worrying research in a 2019 report commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Built Environment Forum Scotland indicates that the removal of professional freeholders in Scotland has contributed to buildings falling into disrepair. A key problem that has been identified is that difficulties in securing a majority agreement among leaseholders and getting all flat owners to fund the repair works needed can significantly slow down remedial work, and that pushes up costs.

[Matt Rodda]

I appreciate that the right hon. Lady wishes to make a point about the importance of shared ownership and the difficulties of managing the shared parts of a large block of flats. Has she looked into the way that this issue is managed in other countries, given that all western countries other than the UK do not have the leasehold system? Surely there are ways to manage communal areas other than by maintaining leasehold, which involves all the difficulties that we have heard about.

[Theresa Villiers]

The fact that English property law is unique does not necessarily mean that it is wrong, but I acknowledge that it is important to look at how other countries manage these issues. That is partly why it is instructive to look at what has happened north of the border. Of course, Scotland has a different legal system. Leasehold and commonhold have been a fundamental part of its system for a long time, and it seems that, in some instances, that is making it more difficult to keep buildings in a decent state of repair.

This is a very important Bill, but it needs careful scrutiny if we are to ensure that it protects leaseholders effectively from abusive and unscrupulous practices, operates fairly and avoids unintended negative consequences for the very people whom it was designed to protect.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak after my former colleague in the Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). She made some good points, not least on part-built developments. I support the Bill’s intent.

There is an expression that you should never take down a fence until you know why it was put there. As I set out in my intervention, I have one or two particular concerns. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have been involved in the property sector for a long time. I am not directly involved in it today and I have no vested interest—that is for the people who make comments on Twitter in particular, because I will not agree entirely with many of the points made about completely scrapping leasehold, in effect. I am actually a leaseholder, rather than a freeholder, in this context.

On the leasehold system, for most of my life, when it comes to selling and renting property, leasehold has been a perfectly workable form of tenure for most people—for most leaseholders and indeed freeholders. In recent years, there is no doubt that the system has been tremendously badly abused. It is right of the Government to act on that in no uncertain terms. However, the fence to which I referred is between freeholders and leaseholders, and it was put there to try to ensure a proper mechanism for resolving disputes. That is why we ended up with a professional landlord who had an overall interest in an entire block, rather than in a specific unit in that block. The Bill will in effect remove any interest that a professional landlord would have in a future block. My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) is therefore right that the default will become commonhold.

On freehold, in my formative years of selling property in York, most flats were leasehold, and those flats were perfectly saleable and rentable. However, if ever we came across a development of freehold flats—a block where all the owners were freeholders, or commonholders, in modern-day parlance—we found that those properties were almost impossible to sell. In fact, mortgage lenders would not lend on them because of concerns about maintenance. If there was not a method to ensure that the building was maintained or that its insurance continued, the building might fall into disrepair and the lender’s security over the property would not be sufficient to cover the mortgage. That is the concern we potentially have here, as we move to this system of commonhold. I think commonhold can work for quite a number of flats—most blocks of flats, indeed—if it is simple and easy to operate.

However, commonhold is far and away not, in any shape or form, a panacea. We can see that from the current experience. There are some effective leasehold or commonhold ways of managing blocks, with residential management companies or right to manage agreements, where in effect the leaseholders manage the block and take on the responsibility of a freeholder. However, there are disputes within such blocks or organisations. The trouble with the commonhold rules—as I understand it, and the Minister may tell me differently—is that each commonholder has the right to raise their own dispute regarding the particular property, and I do not think there is any clear means of resolving such a dispute.

Previously, in a leasehold agreement, the freeholder would have been able to say, “This is what is actually going to happen. These are the terms of the lease, and these are the terms of the lease that you must adhere to.” A simple example of that is the payment of insurance. As I am sure most Members in this debate will know, in a leasehold agreement the freeholder will normally arrange the buildings insurance for the entire block, which obviously covers communal areas, as well as things such as the roof. That would be the responsibility of the freeholder, who would pass on the costs to each individual leaseholder in proportion. If one leaseholder decides not to pay the insurance, the freeholder can say, “Well, you must pay the insurance”, and they can actually carry out debt collection on that leaseholder. If it is an absentee leaseholder, they can go even further: ultimately, they could disenfranchise that leaseholder completely, and take the apartment back from the leaseholder.

I know that that has been used in some draconian ways in leasehold, but generally there is a mechanism that makes sure everybody in the block pays a fair amount for maintenance and things such as the insurance, but I am not sure how that happens in commonhold. If somebody stops paying for their particular element of responsibility for the charges, I do not think there is any such mechanism. The others could take that person to court, but again, the problem is that the fellow residents—fellow commonholders—in that block would have to take one of their own residents to court, instead of a freeholder doing so who does not have a cheek-by-jowl relationship with the resident.

This is why I think we have some of the maintenance issues in Scotland, and in Scotland there are some big maintenance issues, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) mentioned. The hon. Member for Reading West asked about other jurisdictions. Australia has a very similar system, which I think is called the strata system. There are issues there about the recruitment of people to sit on the management boards, with 37% of companies expressing difficulties in recruiting residents to sit on these management boards.

[Matt Rodda]

I absolutely appreciate the difficulties that the hon. Gentleman is outlining, including indeed in relation to my constituency. I should say that my constituency is Reading East; Reading West is the COP26 President’s. In Reading and Woodley, which I represent, there are a number of private roads and other shared facilities where residents come together and share the ownership of assets. Certainly in my experience as the local MP and previously as a councillor, that can be done quite effectively. I do appreciate that there may be issues with very large blocks, and the point I was making to the right hon. Lady from Chipping Campden—[Interruption.] Sorry, I mean the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers); there are various interesting places around the country that we come from today. The point I was making is that we really should look at the wide range of jurisdictions overseas and try to work through some models of what is most appropriate in each given set of circumstances.

However, it is possible to bring residents together. Certainly, that is my experience locally, and in the example of shared private roads, that has been extremely successful. We have a number of areas where they are maintained to a very high standard, the residents all work together effectively and that is absolutely fine. So I do not think we should try unduly to put obstacles in the way of progress on this matter. At the end of the day, the real issue is moving on from this totally unequal system to one where individual householders are treated more equally, and work together in a collaborative and sensible way.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes some good points and I am not saying that in certain circumstances commonhold cannot work. He pointed to the simple situation of a non-adopted road to which local residents have to contribute for the upkeep and it can certainly work in those situations, but I am just trying to point out that there are situations where it would prove difficult to make the system work.

Every jurisdiction—those in Australia or the US or Scotland—is different, and the UK is unique in various ways, one of which is in having a high proportion of absentee owners, such as in central London, where we all see blocks of flats that seem to be rarely occupied. Problems might arise in managing such blocks with for instance 100, 200 or 300 commonholders; there might be disputes and difficulties, such as in debt collection.

On the point about simple things to manage, the biggest issue is complex developments, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet mentioned. Let us consider a block of 300 or 400 flats built above a tube station or adjoining a shopping mall; effectively there will be a common freehold in that development but would anybody here be keen to sit on a committee managing that entire block with, for example, joint M and E—mechanical and electrical—so joint electrical, heating, ventilation and broadband installations, managed not just between the 300 units but the other infrastructure in that development? There are concerns that that would be beyond the appetite of many commonholders who manage that kind of development.

Building Safety Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate and to follow colleagues from across the House.

The Bill is a step forward. However, I have very serious reservations. I will build on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and other colleagues across the House, including the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley).

First, it is important to focus on the single most important weakness of the Bill, which is that many thousands of existing leaseholders will not benefit from it. They are going to be penalised with exorbitant costs —far above what they could possibly pay off—due to the way in which the Government are tackling this deep crisis and the insufficient funding to make good the very serious problems with leasehold properties around the country that have become more and more apparent in the four years following the Grenfell disaster. It is simply deeply unfair that people who bought properties in good faith, in Reading and across the country, should have to pay enormous sums of money to make those properties fire-safe and to deal not only with cladding, but with a range of other issues that I will address in my short speech.

There is also the serious issue of properties under 18 metres. In my area, many blocks are under 18 metres high. I am sure that colleagues across the House will have the same issues in their constituencies. The residents in those blocks deserve to be treated much better by the Government and the industry. Let me give colleagues a small example by describing a desirable, beautifully designed block with an attractive foyer that is central to the town and next to one of the rivers in Reading—a great place to live in many ways, but in the case of a fire potentially a dangerous rabbit warren of small corridors, from which it would be difficult to escape. The block contains a huge amount of fire safety problems and residents may have to pay £150,000 each to get them put right. The problems include: issues with fire doors and with the doors into flats; a lack of internal partitions, meaning that a fire could rip through a block that contains more than 100 separate flats; and a whole range of other difficult problems. Those issues are not addressed by the Bill and they need to be.

I wish briefly to mention the confusion about the EWS1 form and lack of information until the very last minute. There are serious issues with getting the forms and it is right that the Government look into them, but it surely cannot be right to present that information as a written statement on the eve of the debate. I ask the Secretary of State and his colleagues to reflect on that, because it caused a great deal of confusion and concern today and was perplexing.

Let me say equally briefly that there is already a model for how to resolve this issue, and that is the Australian model, as mentioned by colleagues from all parties. Ultimately, it is a question of leadership from the Secretary of State.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to contribute this afternoon. I want to address two areas; the first is my deep concerns about the Government’s planning Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I would like to reiterate the points made by our Front-Bench team and, in particular, to highlight some local issues in Reading and Berkshire, which one of the other Berkshire MPs here has hinted at.

I am afraid that the planning Bill, as it is set out at the moment, looks as though it will sweep away 70 years of relatively sensible town planning, which started with the post-war Government’s Town and Country Planning Act 1947. That is a system that has given local people and local councils, as other Members have mentioned, the right to have a say. I personally would like to see councils and local residents’ groups having more of a say and big developers having less of a say. However, sadly, the Government’s approach to the problem seems to be, rather than to listen to local people and, indeed, local authorities or other valid stakeholders, such as some of the countryside or planning groups, to listen to large developers and to redesign a system that has been quite accurately described, in my view, as a developers’ charter.

I want to run through three specific problems that have a very direct effect on Reading and the neighbouring area of Berkshire, in other towns such as Woodley, and further afield. First, the pressure on out-of-town land—the development of green sites—in our area is enormous. We currently face a number of proposals on the outskirts of Reading that are completely unsuitable, will lead to large amounts of extra car traffic, pollution and congestion on already crowded roads, and will not necessarily solve our housing problems.

Secondly, we have the issue of unwanted development by irresponsible landlords in and around the town centre, with houses in multiple occupation over developed sites, residents overlooked, and people’s back gardens taken for unnecessary development. As far as I can see, the Bill does not address these issues. In fact, it makes it easier for unwanted developments to take place because it grants developers carte blanche.

Thirdly, as other Members have mentioned, including the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), there is the issue of brownfield. I am lucky to represent a town that has an ample supply of brownfield—enough in its local plan to provide all the housing that is needed in the borough of Reading until 2036. At present, we have difficulties getting that developed because of delays with developers and other issues such as contaminated land. I cannot see how the proposal from the Government to give developers yet more power and more influence on the planning process will actually address the very serious problem of developing brownfield, which is so important if we are to regenerate cities and towns in a constructive way, as other Members mentioned. So I urge the Government—the Minister is, I hope, taking notes—to rethink this proposal completely.

Secondly, I would like to raise some deep concerns about fire safety and mention correspondence that I have had with one resident that illustrates the scale of the problem. While the Government have made progress on Grenfell-style cladding—I do acknowledge that—a huge number of other related problems have not been addressed. I will give an example of just one typical block in Reading town centre: £150,000 of work is needed on fire safety doors, compartmentalisation and fire extinguishers. Please can we have some urgent action on this?

Fire Safety Remediation: Leaseholders

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to add to this debate tonight. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) for his excellent speech, which covered a wide range of very serious issues that are faced by residents in towns and cities across the country. In my constituency in Reading and Woodley, we have exactly the same set of problems, which he so eloquently outlined, affecting the city of Portsmouth. I understand from colleagues across the whole country that this is a serious national problem. Indeed, it is fair to say that it is a national scandal. Three years after Grenfell, we still do not have the full set of effective measures in place to take action against these terrible fire safety problems.

Briefly, let me thank the Minister for the work that the Government are doing on some of the taller buildings, but one or two very serious issues remain. I do not want to repeat all the points made by my hon. Friend, but, I will, if I may, address one or two key points that particularly affect local people in Reading and Woodley. As many people will know, our town is growing. We are not a city, but a large town, with many taller buildings in our town centre. That is only likely to increase over time as greater development takes place in the Thames Valley. The same is true across the whole of Berkshire and, indeed, across much of England and the wider UK.

I wish to make two or three key points about the nature of the problem and the range of issues that go beyond the very tall blocks with the Grenfell-style cladding. First, on the height of the blocks, it is important to underline the point made by hon. Friend that there are many blocks under 18 metres. Indeed, the majority of blocks in Reading town centre of any description, whether or not they have problems, are way below that height. However, they are tall enough to make it difficult for people to escape from them if there were an emergency. What we are seeing in our area is a number of issues in blocks of that height—from Grenfell-style ACM cladding, from other types of cladding and, indeed, from other problems.

First, I ask the Minister to reassess the difficulties facing residents living in blocks of under 18 metres. They are being offered a loan, which, as my hon. Friend said, is some assistance, but many of these residents do not have large financial resources, so this is still a very significant imposition on them, and it may take them many years to pay off the loan. They are in this position through no fault of their own, undergoing a huge amount of stress and a great deal of anxiety because of the cladding and other issues in their blocks. As my hon. Friend quite rightly pointed out, many are people who would like to sell, but are unable to do so because they cannot get the right certification.

Secondly, in my experience, this issue goes beyond the very serious one of cladding into a range of other fire safety and building quality issues. There are what appear to be from the outside some beautiful blocks in Reading, next to the River Kennet. There is one with a beautiful white exterior and a modernist appearance. However, the sad reality for its residents is that the compartmentalisation of that building is not up to standard, and if there were a fire, it would be extremely dangerous for them. Therefore, we are seeing issues with compartmentalisation and proper quality of firewalls, whether it is in the original building or through subsequent changes that have not been carried out as they should have been carried out. There are also serious issues with fire spread within buildings and with fire safety doors. An elderly gentleman who lives in sheltered accommodation in a suburb came to me with very serious concerns about the fire door on the front of his property in a low-rise block. He replaced it only to then be told that, because of confusion around the quality of the replacement spec needed, he had to replace it with a further one and, as a pensioner, he was faced with an enormous bill of about £2,000 for a new door. These are the kinds of things we are talking about: cladding, doors, compartmentalisation, and a range of other serious issues. I ask the Minister to look again at the challenges that we face with the large number of lower-rise blocks—he obviously knows about the dangerous fires in the two lower-rise blocks in Barking and Bolton—and at the issue of compartmentalisation and other subsequent and additional fire safety problems.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak in this debate at somewhat short notice. I do very much appreciate that and I wish him a happy St David’s Day—I am afraid that I cannot say that in Welsh. I also ask the Minister if he might be able to reply to my points.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that many people around the country will find it absolutely staggering that the Government can make an agreement one year and go back on it the next?

[Bill Esterson]

That is exactly right, and it was the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) who pointed out to Government Members that they all voted for the withdrawal agreement that they now want to abandon. Most people believed the Prime Minister’s guarantee—that he had an oven-ready deal for them—when they voted for him in last year’s general election. This is not about ignorance or dishonesty, as the right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) would have us believe; it is about the shameful abandonment of the trust of the people of this country. If no deal is the consequence, people will remember the promise made by Conservative Members when they were elected last year on the back of the Prime Minister’s promise.

They must move on from this. They have 24 days left and the clock is ticking. No deal will be disastrous. It will be disastrous for those workers in the car industry, whom the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) mentioned. It will be disastrous for livelihoods and for national security as well. It will be disastrous for security in Northern Ireland if the Good Friday agreement is upended, and it will be disastrous for the prospects of future trade agreements. In the United States, President-elect Biden has already made clear what it would mean to him if the Good Friday agreement is threatened by this Bill.

As for our reputation and authority on the world stage, prior to this debate we had an urgent question on Hong Kong. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) mentioned those countries mentioned by Lord Howard. We will be in no position to lecture anyone on the world stage if we go ahead and break international law. Our credibility will be shot. How will investors be able to trust that their investment will be safe in this country if we are prepared to tear these things up so readily? Who will trust our word? Who will believe anything we say? Who overseas will believe in this country?

Our people deserve better than this. For the sake of the jobs and livelihoods of the people I represent and the people that those on the Government Benches represent, I say to the Government: do not allow no deal to happen. If they fail, the British people will remember who was responsible and they will blame the Prime Minister. They will hold him responsible and they will hold Conservative Members responsible, too.