Local Government Reform

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered local government reform.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I would particularly like to thank Mr Speaker for granting me exceptional permission to speak from the Back Benches on an issue that many of my constituents feel very strongly about.

One day, not long after the new Labour Government came into office, they suddenly announced that they were going to abolish every district and borough council in this country and also change the boundaries of many cities. Following that, a proposal was swiftly put forward by the Labour Mayor of Leicester to expand the boundaries of the city, to swallow up many surrounding areas. All of this came completely out of the blue—it had not been mentioned in the general election—and the Government did not start by asking people what they might want; instead, they simply told them what was going to happen.

Right from the start, it was clear to me from speaking to people in Leicestershire that there was very strong opposition to this plan. Right from the start, I have said to Ministers on the Floor of the Commons, “If you believe this is the right thing, and if you believe this is what local people want, why don’t you let us have a vote on it? Why don’t you give people a say?” But Ministers treated the idea of giving people a vote as ridiculous—“What an absurd idea! Why would we ask people what they want?”—and said no to allowing us a local referendum. Because the Government will not give people a vote, I have given my constituents a vote. Over recent weeks, I have been balloting people in the affected area about whether they want to be part of the city of Leicester. I sent every household in the area a ballot paper asking, in a completely neutral way, “Do you want to become part of the city or not?”

The result has been surprising and overwhelming. I knew that people felt very strongly. It turns out they feel very, very strongly about this issue. I sent a ballot paper to all 22,000 households in Oadby and Wigston, and 10,774 have responded—about half, which is an incredible response to an informal local referendum. Of those who have voted, almost all are opposed to Oadby and Wigston being swallowed up by the city. In fact, 97% of people—10,410—voted against it, so it could not be clearer that people in Oadby and Wigston do not want to be swallowed up by the city.

But that is not all. The plan put forward by the Mayor of Leicester would see him taking over other areas as well, such as part of the Harborough district including Great Glen, Newton Harcourt and the area around the Strettons. The bid he has put into Government would see him swallowing up all of the Harborough district, including Market Harborough. We have no idea how the Government will respond to that.

We know that the mayor definitely wants to take over the area around Great Glen, but people there are also very strongly opposed to this. I sent out 2,000 ballot papers there. Around that area, 1,035 people voted, of whom 1,013 voted against being part of the city—98% of people do not want to join the city. If we take all those together—Oadby and Wigston and the area around Great Glen—that is 11,423 people who have voted against joining the city, which is an incredible number in quite a small area.

I have not balloted other places nearby in quite the same detail, but I suspect that if I gave a vote to people in Kibworth, Burton Overy, Gaulby or King’s Norton, they would say exactly the same. People do not want to be part of the city, yet so far the Labour Government have refused to listen and have not wanted to give people a say. They must now start listening to the wishes of the people. Next month, we will find out what the Government have decided to do. If the Minister decides to push ahead with plans to expand the city, Ministers must know that they are doing so in the face of total and overwhelming local opposition.

When I talk to local people, they give me different reasons why they do not want to be part of the city. One factor is higher council tax. A typical band D property in the city pays £122 more than a property in Oadby and Wigston, and £139 more than a property in Harborough. Obviously, a bigger property pays even more: a band H property pays £244 more in the city than in Oadby and Wigston, and £278 more than in Harborough.

But it is not just the cost that is driving the opposition; people do not want to lose local accountability and their local identity. All these places have their own strong local character. Oadby and Wigston have always been separate from the city of Leicester. Wigston is in the Domesday Book—in fact, it had been around for about 500 years even then. It has two beautiful medieval churches and is known for their two spires. South Wigston is very different. It is a Victorian model town, built by a visionary industrialist called Orson Wright, who built the whole place with his own brickworks. That red brick character can still be seen driving up the Blaby Road.

Oadby, as the name implies—there are lots of “by’s” around Leicestershire—has Viking origins. It has its own quirks and history, too. For example, of the 114 livery companies in this country, all are in the City of London apart from one, which is in Oadby, in the beautiful hall and alms-houses created by the Framework Knitters.

I could go on and on. Great Glen has its own history. It has a beautiful church, which was quite badly damaged by parliamentarians who were camping there during the civil war—I suppose that, as a parliamentarian myself, I should apologise for that. These are places with their own strong history, and their desire to hold on to that local accountability and identity is seen as ridiculous by local officials.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a really important point about local identity and about how important it is that Ministers listen. We have a Minister here today listening. I want to talk about the local government reorganisation in Kent, an area that has an incredibly strong historic identity. It is actually England’s oldest county, with a history going back more than 2,000 years—it was the Kingdom of Kent—yet under this local government reorganisation, Kent is due to be broken up, and it is not even getting a mayor. It will be fragmented into multiple parts. The population between Kent and Medway is over 2 million. At the moment, Kent has an identity and a voice. It is set to lose both through this local government reorganisation, and the case for substantial savings simply is not there. The local government reorganisation needs to be looked at again, and I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that, at the moment, the proposals are a shambles.

[Neil O’Brien]

I am very sorry to hear that. I was just about to make that point: as well as the loss of local accountability and identity, the argument is just wrong. Ministers believe that big is always better—that big is beautiful—but the evidence does not support that. If big were beautiful, Birmingham city council, which is the biggest unitary in the country, would be our best council. Is it our best council? No, it is not; we have bins piling up in the streets.

It is not just that one anecdote; the point can be expressed in lots of different ways. The Local Councils Network found that, for mega-councils with populations of over half a million, which was the Government’s original target for this reorganisation, the average council tax is £2,009, but for councils below that size, it is £250 a year cheaper. If mega-councils are so efficient and wonderful, why are they much more expensive? Why are local residents not feeling the benefit of the efficiency? The truth is, of course, that the gains are not there. The reorganisation, and the chaos that will come with all this, will actually cost us lots of money, and we will end up with something that is remote but not more efficient.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is very clear from my hon. Friend’s powerful speech that his constituents in Leicestershire do not want local government reform, and my constituents in Rayleigh and Wickford in Essex do not want it either. Has he seen the letter from 16 council leaders from the County Council Network giving a whole host of reasons why it is a bad idea? I would add that it is a Trojan horse that Labour is using to try to cover our green fields in concrete. There is no demand for this. People do not want it. They want to protect their existing local identities. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should take the hint and drop the whole barmy plan?

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend is quite right, and he has also pre-empted something I was about to say. The Government are pressing on with “big is beautiful”—they have expanded Norwich, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Southampton, and so forth—but we can see that bigger councils are not more efficient.

One motive on the part of officials is the belief that making those cities bigger will cause more housing to be built. I do not think that is right, but the logic is this: a bigger council will be more remote from people, so will be less likely to listen to local opposition and more able to ride roughshod over it. In particular for Labour, there is a belief that expanding cities makes it easier for those often Labour-run urban councils to move the housing need on to the outskirts, and not to have to ruffle any feathers in the city. I can see why Labour politicians find that idea attractive but it is wrong, particularly in Leicestershire.

In Manchester, the places that were derelict mills when I was a teenager are now trendy flats and coffee bars with flat whites, and it is all very cool. In Leicester, all those derelict mills are still just derelict mills. The city is in desperate need of urban regeneration and needs new life and younger people to move in, but that is not being generated. Instead, there is a desire— not just with this proposal, but with prior moves by the mayor—to dump housing need into areas around him and not do the difficult things to fix the city itself.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case against the reorganisation in principle, but does he agree that if it is to go ahead, the Government should stick to the guidelines they provided to councils? In Oxfordshire, a Labour city proposal for a similar expansion of the boundaries of the city violates many of the principles set out, such as that it should be bounded by the existing district boundaries and, as far as possible, avoid breaking up service provision. Does he agree that, if this is to go ahead, the Government should stick to clear criteria when making decisions?

[Neil O’Brien]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who is absolutely right. The local nature of local government is critical.

The other problem with these giant councils is how remote they will be. In Oadby and Wigston at the moment, everyone can walk to the council offices, or take a maximum five-minute drive. Harborough is a little bigger, but is still very local. If we get a giant council, my constituents will have to drive 40 minutes up the M1 motorway to see council officers. The whole thing will feel more remote and local government will be less local. The point of local government is to be truly local and to care about the things that a big, remote authority will not necessarily care about.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent argument for councils to be more accountable to local residents by being closer. The Government responded to Sussex’s proposals by redrawing the red lines they had originally set and putting forward a third proposal. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that just throws communities into total disarray? They thought they had responded to a consultation that was going to form the next council, but now they have been told, “Oh, actually, you can’t have either of those things. We’re going to come up with a new solution for you.”

[Neil O’Brien]

I am very sorry to hear that. It is bad when people feel that the goalposts are being moved because it erodes trust in the process even further.

Crucially, nobody asked for this. People email me every day about all kinds of things they want sorted out locally, but nobody ever emailed me to say they wanted their councils to be abolished and replaced with something bigger and more remote. No one emailed me to say they wanted to be part of the city of Leicester. It is a bad idea, being done for the wrong reasons and in an undemocratic way.

I can see why the Mayor of Leicester wants to expand. He wants a bigger city and will get all the council tax and business rate revenues from the areas moved in. He would have a place to dump all the housing need without ruffling any feathers in the city. I can see the upside for him, but I cannot see what is in it for my constituents, and nor can they. They do not want this, as is clear and indisputable. The Government cannot pretend for a second that this is in any sense what local people want. The Minister here today does not live in our area, which is not her fault, but she has asked people what they think. Now that she has heard, I hope she will start to listen to local people as she makes her decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Thank you for your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The irony of all this is that the Minister’s only argument is that we must avoid a two-tier system, but what the Government want is to replace one two-tier system with a completely different two-tier system that has a mayor and unitary authority. It is an exercise in the utmost futility.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

Ancient woodland and ancient and veteran trees are already strictly protected in national planning policy, while tree preservation orders safeguard individual trees or groups of trees of particular value. It is for local planning authorities to apply the protections effectively as they have principal responsibility. I am more than happy to discuss that further with my hon. Friend.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

My constituents, particularly in Great Glen, have just experienced devastating flooding. Under the last Government, we opened up the flood recovery framework so that they could get grants to protect themselves. When will they be able to access that money under this Government?

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Gentleman will know that these decisions are taken on a case-by-case basis, generally depending on the extent of damage from floods. We will look at that closely. I would be willing to talk to him to ensure that the accountability is there.

Local Government Reorganisation

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

We already knew that the Government wanted to abolish our local district and borough councils in Leicestershire without consulting local people. We now know that the proposal will involve a significant expansion of the boundaries of the city of Leicester—something demanded by the Mayor of Leicester that would lead to significantly higher council tax for my residents. Within days, thousands of local people have signed a petition started by me and other local MPs who are against the proposal, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), who cannot be here today. My local districts and boroughs are against it, so will the Government at least agree to hold a local referendum in Leicestershire before imposing this proposal from London that local people do not want?

[Jim McMahon]

A theme is developing of campaigning for elections to bodies that some wish will not exist in the future—that sounds familiar—and for referendums being the answer to some of this. It is about local leaders showing leadership. I understand completely that there are different views, but I am impressed by the leadership being shown by Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and others, because local leaders believe in their place and want the best outcome for it. I will leave the local politics to them. It is our job to ensure that we assess the proposals that come forward on a fair basis.

Building Homes

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

That question sits slightly outside the framework, although, as I said, there are targeted changes to support the delivery of new affordable homes. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to do more about the decency of the existing social housing stock. We will be consulting on a new decent homes standard in the new year, as well as introducing Awaab’s law to clamp down on the most severe hazards.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

Labour’s new housing target for Harborough is a 40% increase, and the target for Oadby and Wigston has doubled. Yet we can see that the overcrowding problem is worse in urban areas, and the gap between population growth and housing growth is worse in those areas, too. We can see the environmental arguments, too.

However, the Minister has announced today that the new target for London is about 11% lower than the old one. In the original round of numbers, Nottingham was down 21%, Birmingham and Leicester were down 31%, and Coventry was down 50%. Can he tell me what the numbers are now for those midlands cities? Are they all still going down, even as the targets for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston are going up?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I think the hon. Gentleman slightly misunderstands the situation for urban authorities. The housing targets are going up across metro areas.

[Neil O’Brien]

What about the cities?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I have been very clear about this. We have dropped the arbitrary 35% uplift introduced by the previous Government, which bore no relation to housing need. Metro area targets are going up. The hon. Gentleman will find out from the specific targets, which have been produced by our redistribution of the formula within that envelope, what the new numbers are for his two local authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

Again, I ask hon. Members to wait for the spending review on Wednesday, and for the provisional settlement in December. We are under no illusion about the pressures faced by councils on homelessness. In the end, we need to repair the system, which is about providing safe, secure and affordable housing for people to live in. We will do that, but we also recognise that there is a problem today. Further detail on that will follow.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

3. What plans her Department has to develop Stretton Hall through the new homes accelerator programme.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

Stretton Hall is one of seven sites that the Government have identified to date that we believe would benefit from support through the new homes accelerator, which is a joint programme between the Department and Homes England aiming to speed up the delivery of large-scale housing developments across England.

[Neil O’Brien]

Documents from Harborough district council reveal that there are sites with a capacity of up to 16,000 homes around Stretton Hall. The Government’s press release in August said that there would be around 4,000 homes on the site that they are involved in. Will the Minister confirm which Minister visited the site before the announcement? Will he agree to publish the methodology that led to our community being selected, and the list of sites that were considered but not selected?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I have not had the opportunity to visit the site, but I intend to do so in the future, along with the other new homes accelerator sites. On the point of principle, to meet housing demand and housing need in England, every area of the country must play its part. The site in question is currently being promoted in both the Harborough local plan and the Oadby and Wigston local plan, as it crosses the boundary of both local authorities. Although I appreciate that it does face a number of planning and enabling challenges, the Government believe that it nevertheless has the potential to make a significant contribution to housing supply in Leicestershire.

Renters (Reform) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

I think I have been quite clear that it is important that we see that the courts are ready for these reforms. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), is here on the Front Bench with me. He and the MOJ are working at pace to ensure that the courts are ready for the reforms we are introducing. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) asks about a specialist housing court. We do not believe that that is the best way to improve the court process for possession—a view shared by the judiciary who responded to our call for evidence.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

The Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), rightly said that this should have happened five years ago, but I gently say that in those five years we have had the coronavirus pandemic, which is the main thing that has slowed down the process of improving the courts. I strongly encourage the Minister not to rush into doing this prematurely, because it would benefit neither tenants nor landlords if he did.

[Jacob Young]

I do not think that it will surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to learn that I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, whom I thank for making those points.

Government new clause 30 will enable the Government to assess the effect that our new tenancy system is having on county courts before our reforms are rolled out more widely, giving us confidence that the sector is ready. I am happy to share with colleagues that we are exploring whether serious eviction cases, such as for antisocial behaviour, can be prioritised in court listings. We will consult on options following Royal Assent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

It is four months since the Bill concluded in Committee and five years since the Government promised to legislate for renters’ rights, so I start by saying that it is totally unacceptable that it has taken so long for the Renters (Reform) Bill to be on Report. It is deplorable for nearly a million renters to have been issued with section 21 eviction notices in England since the Government promised to abolish them, according to recent YouGov data. Renters have been badly let down by this delay, and aspects of the legislation before us continue to let them down.

My amendment 12 would require energy performance certificates for properties to be provided to the database operator and for the details to be recorded in the portal. This simple amendment would make a big difference. It would recognise that information is power and allow tenants to know whether the home they are about to rent will be damp and leaky or warm and efficient.

Amendment 12 also builds on the existing rules that require EPCs to be commissioned before properties are put on the market and for them to be clearly displayed in adverts in commercial media. Fairness and logic demand that renters should be able easily to compare energy efficiency information when considering properties to rent. A cold and damp home can end up costing renters dearly, both in high energy bills and health and wellbeing impacts.

Renters in cold and damp homes run an increased risk of problems associated with mould and of health conditions such as asthma and heart disease, as well as of poor mental health. We all know that the UK has some of the leakiest homes in Europe and that tenants are particularly exposed to high global gas prices, because the private rented sector is the least energy efficient of any tenure. A staggering quarter of renting households are living in fuel poverty today, so urgent action is essential to improve standards across the sector and to ensure that all renters have a warm and decent home in which to live.

It therefore beggars belief that the Prime Minister announced last September that he was scrapping the requirement to upgrade energy efficiency standards in private rented properties to EPC grade C. That was despite it being essential to deliver on our climate and fuel poverty targets. That upgrade would save tenants more than £250 a year, even at so-called normal prices, according to the Climate Change Committee. As well as harming renters, that regressive move was also contrary to the wishes of landlords, 80% of whom are in favour of stricter energy efficiency regulations.

My amendment 13 seeks to tackle the crippling private rents that so many people are paying. In Brighton and Hove, in which my constituency rests, a new study of more than 50,000 renters found that tenants in the city were spending a scandalous 56.9% of their pay on rent, making it the most expensive city in England in which to rent. As the Bill stands, the measures on rent increases are wholly inadequate. They rely on a resource-intensive and time-consuming appeals process that could even see tenants worse off at the end of it, because the tribunal would have the power to impose a higher rent than the one the tenant is appealing. That is frankly outrageous and goes directly against the promise made in the Secretary of State’s White Paper, which said:

“We will prevent the Tribunal increasing rent beyond the amount landlords initially asked for when they proposed a rent increase.”

Amendment 13 would simply make good that broken promise by ensuring that the rent payable after a tribunal determination can be no higher than the rent initially imposed by the landlord in the notice served on the tenant. One would have thought that that would be pretty straightforward. Given that the landlord is proposing that rent level in the first place, that must surely be the upper limit of what the tribunal can determine. The Secretary of State obviously understands that principle, since he put in in his own White Paper.

The removal of this commitment in the Bill shows the Government are determined to bend over backwards to tip the balance of power even further in favour of landlords. In short, amendment 13 would get rid of what seems to be a deliberate disincentive to discourage tenants from using the process that is supposed to protect them from unfair rent hikes. In the absence of a national system for rent controls with local flexibility, which is what we really need, amendment 13 is a modest rebalancing of the rent tribunal process, and I would welcome the Minister’s consideration and response in summing up the debate.

There is limited time in the debate, but I very much support the amendments seeking to prohibit evictions within two years of the beginning of a tenancy where the landlord wants to sell or move family in. As the Bill stands, tenants can be served two months’ notice just four months after a tenant has moved in, making a mockery of ministerial claims to improve security of tenure. I also sincerely hope that Ministers will accept amendment 14, which addresses the deeply concerning fact that the notice period for eviction under the new landlord grounds is just two months. This amendment extends it to four months in recognition of the huge difficulty many people face in finding somewhere suitable and affordable to rent when they are evicted, which, as we know, is a major cause of homelessness.

[Neil O’Brien]

I have never been a landlord, but I have been a private renter and I greatly welcome some of the measures in the Bill as they would have helped me and other private renters a lot. I was offered some extraordinary properties when I was a private renter. I remember that one had dog mess all over the floor, while another in Elephant and Castle had bare wires hanging out of the wall and a gas cooker hanging off the wall. I welcome the extension of the decent homes standard to the private rented sector through this legislation, and it is striking how little controversy there has been about that given how big a deal it is. The proportion of private rented homes that have a major category 1 hazard in them has already come right down, from 24% when we came into office in 2010 to just 12% now, but that is still too high, and it is three times higher than in the social rented sector. So it is great that today we are pressing on with fixing this.

The Government amendments we are debating today are welcome. They strike a good balance between the interests of tenants and of landlords. For example, new clause 30, which makes the commencement of the end of no-fault evictions dependent on county courts being ready, is sensible. The slow recovery of the courts from the covid backlog has been frustrating, and there is a much wider question about how we can get rid of old-fashioned court practices that slow things down. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), Chair of the Justice Committee, made important points about the paper-based nature still of a lot of what goes on there.

However, a lot of good ideas can be wrecked if we do not get the implementation just right and my hon. and learned Friend also mentioned that it currently takes about 55 weeks from commencement to possession, which is much too long. Although I agree with what we are doing here in terms of no-fault evictions, it is a big deal and it is right and reasonable that those who let out properties do at least know that they can rely on a slick and well-functioning court process before we bring this measure in. Even those on the Opposition Front Bench said the courts were recovering from the pandemic, rather than being fully recovered, so I think they recognise that up to a point as well.

The Government have made a range of other sensible reforms in the new clauses before us to ensure that there is fairness for landlords as well as tenants, including new clause 15 which gives those who let out properties some confidence in the first six months. There are the new student grounds as well, and I note that even landlord groups such as the National Residential Landlords Association are now saying we should get on with this legislation, so I think this is about right.

A large number of Government amendments are before us today, but the overall effect is to get a good balance in the legislation. I know some have concerns about the end of section 21, but many countries have a similar system and the sky has not fallen in. Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands all banned no-fault evictions, and they have a higher share of private renting than us, and in the US and Canada states including California and Quebec do the same and the sky has not fallen in there either. Even Scotland has had this since 2017 and, again, although it has done some other things that are pretty unwise in terms of rent control, the sky has not fallen in.

Landlords will still be able to cite a lot of reasons to ensure that they can get their property back. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who is not in her place, suggested that perhaps there were still too many, but I think it is essential that people can get their property back. The end of section 21 changes the balance a bit, recognising that it is no small thing to ask people to move homes.

There are more people living in the private rented sector with children these days, and it is hugely disruptive to have to move. I remember how, in a place that I was renting, we were all moved out because the landlord was supposedly going to do massive works, but he ended up installing about 1 square metre of linoleum and let the place out again for the same rent. It was just a huge amount of disruption to no particular end. For those in a more vulnerable position than I was, it is not a small thing to be asked to move home, so by ending section 21 but still enabling landlords to get control of their property when they need it, we are striking the right balance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. Those who have suffered as a result of the infected blood scandal are, of course, in the forefront of our minds. This is directly a Cabinet Office responsibility, but I know from my time there how seriously the Ministers charged with that responsibility take it. I will talk to them and update the devolved Administrations on progress towards appropriate compensation.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

The Government are to be commended for taking through the first leasehold reforms for 20 years, but as the Bill now goes to the Lords, will Ministers go further and agree: first, to empower the 3 million to 4 million people trapped on fleecehold estates; and, secondly, to fundamentally end this scammy, dodgy, corrupt model once and for all?

[The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about making sure that we strike the right balance. We have brought forward significant reforms in the Bill, but I am happy to continue to talk to him and other Members who are interested. The Government continue to look at what more can be done.

Leasehold Reform and New Homes

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered leasehold reform and new homes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. Yesterday, we had an excellent Report stage debate on the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. I was really encouraged to hear from the Minister that the Government are looking at going further on two of the big things that we need to improve in the Bill: ending forfeiture and ending the private estates, or so-called fleecehold estates, model. I once again thank all the different bodies that have worked so hard to get us to this point, the Minister, who managed to get the time for this legislation, the ministerial team that came before him, and all the different bodies that provided useful evidence in Committee, including the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, the National Leasehold Campaign, Harry Scoffin and Free Leaseholders, HorNet, the HomeOwners Alliance, and many more.

I do not want to just repeat all the points we made yesterday, but I will briefly touch on some, because my speech flows on from them. Yesterday, I quoted my constituent Karen, who said that dealing with FirstPort, her fleecehold company, is

“like having a part time job”,

and who is being charged for, among other things, terrorism insurance for a fence. I quoted my constituent James, who says that he spent

“about 50 days’ work over the first couple of years”

dealing with his unadopted estate and trying to put right some of the mistakes made by developers.

I quoted the residents of Hursley Park, who managed to get control over their residents management company because of a legal mistake by the developer, but years on are still fighting to avoid being lumbered with the cost of botched work by Mulberry Homes. Disappointingly, that developer will not even meet them to discuss it. I also quoted one of the residents of the Farndon Fields estate, who has had a long battle with a faceless fleecehold company called Chamonix that billed people for large sums, did almost no work, repeatedly billed people several times for things they had already paid, and generally behaved appallingly.

I want to bring out how some of those stories show the different ways that we can intervene to get rid of this awful, scamming industry, which sees councils and developers effectively colluding to stiff residents with big bills and poor services. The first step is to look at how homes are sold. Numerous Members in yesterday’s debate talked about constituents who had not realised what they would be liable for. That seems to be particularly the case where people are bribed by the developers to use their lawyers—oddly enough, developers’ lawyers do not always point out the big bills that people will face. That is the first thing we should look at.

The second step is to look at the whole planning process and the fact that permission is often given before there is clarity on adoption. That is a bizarre way of going about things. The residents of Devana Way in my constituency, who I did not mention yesterday, found that out the hard way. They bought beautiful, expensive homes on a nice tree-lined street, but during the process of haggling with the county council over adoption and who was going to look after the trees, the developer concluded that it would be cheaper to simply rip out all the trees—and that is what it did one morning, to the horror of residents. I do not blame councils for wanting funds to look after trees; in fact, I think we should make it a priority in local government finance to make sure that all residential streets come with trees. However, there needs to be clarity about the rules of adoption up front, not after the fact.

Likewise, we need to stop developers wriggling out of planning conditions more generally through variations, as one developer is trying to do at the top of Kettering Road in Market Harborough—it is trying to get rid of a bus service it promised when it was trying to get planning permission. One of the most common abuses is that developers promise that there will be a new GP surgery as part of a new estate, but in fact have no plan, no intention or no way to deliver it. I am afraid I know several colleagues who have had that happen in their constituencies.

The Minister has promised to make progress on forfeiture, one of the most important things we have to deal with. That is important across leasehold and on fleecehold estates, too, because the disproportionate threat that someone might lose their home over a tiny unpaid sum enables the fleecehold cowboys to terrorise people into paying up. People are being conned about what they are buying. As we said yesterday, Margaret Thatcher said that there was no prouder word in our language than “freeholder”. Many of those people believe they are freeholders, but do not realise the threat hanging over them. My constituent Karen said that purchasers on her estate were not told that they would have to pay an annual rent charge:

“the word ‘rent’ wasn’t used by anyone we spoke to. It was referred to as a ‘maintenance charge’—if it was referred to at all. I didn’t fully understand what ‘rent charges’ meant until about four years after we bought.”

That is another way that people are being mugged by the fleecehold estates model.

We need to do two things. First, we need to help the 3 million to 4 million people who are stuck on fleecehold estates. We could do that through something such as a right to manage, or better still we could give them the opportunity to have their estates adopted by the council, which is what many of them want.

Secondly, we need to end this model for the future, which again could be done in numerous ways. We could do what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) suggested and prevent companies from charging for things that are usually provided by councils. Alternatively, we could use guidance to ban the model except in extreme and exceptional circumstances. I do not mind how we go about it, but we have to end the model.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making a fantastic speech—I do not always say that to Government Members—but does he agree that this is about fairness? The current leasehold system is not fair, and it is certainly not just. In 2022, my Battersea constituency was area with the 18th highest number of leasehold transactions. The hon. Gentleman is part of the governing party, and the Government have really missed an opportunity to do away with this outdated system and bring about fairness and justice for leaseholders. Thousands of my constituents, like his, have been calling for that.

[Neil O'Brien]

I got a sense from the Minister yesterday that the legislation will go further. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill is already a great achievement. It is the first time since 2002, I think, that we have legislated on this matter. According to the Opposition, there were some big missed opportunities when we passed that legislation, which has never been commenced—I think everyone across the House agrees with that. The Bill is already good, but I think I detected from the Minister that there are ways we can make it better, and I hope we will collectively be able to do that. To be clear, the people who have been stuffed by the fleecehold estates model do not want a marginal change; they want to end this fundamentally rip-off model.

I asked for this debate to be about new homes as well as leasehold, because sadly fleecehold is just one of the issues affecting buyers of new homes. I have been conducting a survey across Harborough, Oadby and Wigston of buyers of new homes, and I am struck by how widespread the problems are. In two different streets in different places in my constituency, residents have faced sewage in their street and even flowing up into their sinks, dishwashers and showers. There have been occasions when they have been unable to wash because of that.

In the first location, which I visited the other day, the problems have been going on for about four years. The developer plugged the sewage system from a new estate into a sewer for an older estate, causing the older sewage system to overflow with rain water. After four years of denials from the developer, the residents have proved, with the help of Severn Trent, where the problem is coming from. The developer has, in fairness, finally fessed up to causing the problem, and the new person in charge locally seems serious about fixing the problem, so I will not name them for now.

In the second case, Meadow Hill in Wigston, the problem has been going on for about six years. The sewage system in the new estate is simply inadequate. The homes were originally built by Westleigh Homes and were taken over by Countryside Partnerships after completion, which itself has been taken over by Vistry Group. Vistry continues to deny the problem and will not take responsibility, even though I have seen for myself bits of toilet paper in the road that have come spurting up from overflowing sewers. Vistry does not fix the problem. It occasionally sends people to clean up, but mainly it is left to residents to clean up the faeces. I would like to invite Greg Fitzgerald, the chief executive officer of Vistry, to come to see the filth for himself, and I will perhaps ask him how much he would like to have it in his street and coming up into his home. Stephen Teagle, who runs Countryside Partnerships, would also be very welcome to join us to see that disgusting case.

Those are extreme cases, but I am struck by how often British developers sell homes with serious problems, either with the property or with the new estate. For example, a constituent in Wigston has faced a bill of about £10,000 to fix problems caused by his developer, which left his garden at a very steep angle. After two years of fighting, the developer, David Wilson Homes, has agreed to pay about 20% of the cost—a tiny fraction.

A constituent who moved into a new development in Kibworth faced numerous rat infestations due to the pipes in her new home not being fitted correctly. She also experienced mould in the bathroom because the bath was also not fitted correctly.

A constituent who moved into Wellington Place in Market Harborough had more than 200 snags on their property. The toilets did not drain properly, and the downstairs toilet did not work at all for many months, which meant that their disabled daughter had to go upstairs to use the loo. The entire garden needed to be excavated to be fixed and, alarmingly, the fire alarms did not work properly. My constituent found it difficult to get hold of the developer, Davidsons, to get any of those issues addressed, because it had sacked the people responsible for aftercare on the estate.

There are reasons such things happen. On the surface level, some developers are simply more serious about ensuring quality than others. It is not impossible to get it right in the current system, and many do. The Government’s creation of the new homes ombudsman service is a big and very welcome move towards tackling the problems directly. However, some of the problems also reflect wider problems with this country’s model of development: the so-called fast-turn model. In Britain, so much of the profitability of the industry turns on its ability to play our dysfunctional planning system rather than its ability to build in quality.

I was going to make this point today anyway, but as it happens the Competition and Markets Authority’s monumental investigation of the housing market, which was published earlier this week, gives us a huge amount of further evidence that the current model is dysfunctional. Naturally, the sharing of information and cartel-like behaviour between firms was the headline of the report, but many of the other findings are just as explosive. The CMA notes that

“housebuilders don’t have strong incentives to compete on quality and consumers have unclear routes of redress.”

It also notes:

“We see evidence of a statistically significant increase over time in the proportion of homeowners reporting higher numbers of snags, with 35% of respondents…in 2021-22 reporting 16 or more different problems.”

The report brings out what some of those “snags” look like in the real world. One homeowner notes:

“After moving in, my attic hatch fell completely out of the ceiling of its own, because the joiner had only used three screws to fix it instead of sixteen”.

Another says:

“The stairs collapsed while walking up [them] with my son.”

The CMA notes the growing volume of complaints about hidden charges. Among the CMA’s recommendations is

“requiring councils to adopt amenities on all new housing estates.”

That is a very good idea, which takes us back to the issue of leasehold, and I hope that the Government adopt it.

One of the great strengths of the CMA report is the way that it draws the links between the broken planning system and the industry that results from it. Following the conclusions of the Letwin review, the report concludes:

“The evidence shows that private developers produce houses at a rate at which they can be sold without needing to reduce their prices”.

In a paper that I wrote for the think-tank Onward six years ago, I tried to set out some of these dysfunctions. The complexity of the planning system increases market concentration directly and also indirectly, by amplifying the land price cycle, which leads to fewer and fewer developers in each economic cycle, as the small players go bust and are forced out of the market. I am encouraged that the Government are taking great strides towards a better model of development in this country by fixing those deeper, underlying problems.

The vision for more purposive urban regeneration set out in the long-term plan for housing is a good one. The recently passed Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 creates stronger compulsory purchase order powers and requires the dark market in land options to be replaced by a register of land options. I look forward to us cracking on with the secondary legislation needed to bring that about. I also look forward to the Government taking further steps towards creating a more purposive, less passive planning system, in which deliberate, plan-led development becomes a greater share of development and small, speculative development, without the necessary infrastructure, becomes a smaller part of development. The Government are sold on that vision and are making big strides towards it. The current ministerial team—the Secretary of State and our brilliant Housing Minister, who is here today—have that vision and experience these issues in their own constituencies.

I am confident that we are moving in the right direction. I hope that, when the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill arrives in the House of Lords, the Government will proactively take steps to improve it to address these issues. If I read the Minister’s body language right, he clearly understands those issues and wants to act on them. I hope that we can agree to act as quickly as possible, because the issues that I have described in my constituency are horrendous. People have worked hard, saved up a lot, done all the right things, and bought a new home, but they are getting mugged by an industry that, although also having some good players, has some real cowboys. As I said yesterday, the people in my constituency want a new sheriff—in the form of our current Housing Minister—to ride into town on his white horse, blow some of those bad guys away, put right what is being done wrongly and address the glaring injustices that my constituents are experiencing.

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

Thank you for chairing this session, Mrs Harris. I thank all hon. Members for their interesting and important contributions during the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) raised the issue of conveyancing being done by someone tied to the developer, and the bad incentives that that sets up. The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) welcomed the action on maintenance charges but gave us a terrifying example of constituents getting the charges but no actual maintenance.

The Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), raised the case of Terry Woodjetts, and I really like his idea of a bond. I have long thought that, instead of councils having to take developers to court for infringements of planning conditions and building conditions, it would be much simpler if the onus was reversed so that a bond was held by the council and only released if developers did the right thing during the development process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) made important points about people finding out terms only once it was too late because they had paid the deposit or the whole whack, and about how even quite sophisticated people such as estate agents can end up being trapped by this complex system.

I have raised lots of harrowing cases in the debate, and lots of other Members have done the same. However, to end on a moment of light, when I think about the document I wrote in 2018, I am struck by the fact that, although politics—particularly this field—is not for the impatient, it is possible to make progress, and we are making progress. An example of that is leasehold houses. The promise alone that we were going to take the legislative action that we are now taking has driven down the number of leasehold houses very dramatically over recent years. I raised the issue of getting new GP surgeries in new estates, and we have already made progress on that through the new NPPF guidance. The conversation is continuing, and it is not a straightforward one. The Minister is right to read into the record the different elements of progress that have already been made in the Bill and to highlight the complexity and the fact that it is not straightforward to make further progress.

However, to end on a moment of optimism, I wrote about things such as the transparency of land options in 2018. I published my paper in 2018 and, as a Minister in the Department in 2021, I made the case for us putting that in legislation. We legislated in 2023, and we will be doing the secondary legislation in 2024. It takes a long time to do things, but we do eventually get there.

Capturing more land value for the community is something they do brilliantly in Hong Kong—the hon. Member for Strangford has been communicating with people whose human rights have been violated there. One thing they have always done well there is capture land value for the community, and we are making progress on that through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act—not just the new infrastructure levy that we will roll out over the coming years, but the new compulsory purchase order powers, which I look forward to being used.

I have been making arguments for a long time about building in the wrong places without the right infrastructure. Again, we have made progress on that, whether that is the urban uplift, the objectively assessed housing need, which came in a few years ago, or the moves to liberalise brownfield development that have been mooted more recently. We have made progress towards all those things. I talk about the broken planning system, and we are making progress towards it being less broken than it was, but there is still a lot to do.

From that story of progress and of a lot of things needing fixing, I take an optimistic point, which is simply that, although there is a lot for the Minister to do, and it is not easy to make progress on these things, we have already made good progress, and we have another opportunity to make some big strides forward through the Bill. I am encouraged not just by the fact that the Minister is an able and brilliant Minister, but by his saying today that we will take the opportunity to go further on these things, which have caused such a lot of grief for my constituents. These are issues that we can fix.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered leasehold reform and new homes.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend has been a campaigner for many years on the importance of this matter, and I know how strongly he feels and how much he acts on it on behalf of his constituents. We are absolutely committed to making progress on estate management. The Bill demonstrates a significant step forward in doing that, and we will see what else we can do in the future.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Lee Rowley]

I am going to wind up so as to give others the opportunity to speak. To sum up, property ownership has been described as one of the bulwarks of individual freedom, and the measures I have described today are designed to give all homeowners, particularly the younger generation, the chance to gain a proper stake in our democracy. The Bill seeks to bring greater fairness, transparency and accountability to the system, and to give millions of people across the country a more secure foundation to get on in life, a stronger stake in our society and a solid platform for the future. I am grateful for all Members’ efforts to improve the Bill and for the scrutiny and debate it has received so far, and I look forward to hearing the further discussions to that effect this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

He was right. This Bill does not do that. It will be left to a future Labour Government.

[Neil O'Brien]

There are a lot of good things in this Bill. I give credit to the Minister and previous Ministers for introducing it, and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who has played a massive role in bringing it to the House. It effectively bans the sale of new leasehold houses through new clause 42 that we have been discussing, extends leaseholders’ rights in various ways and increases transparency over service charges.

However, there are two big things that still need to be strengthened in the Bill, which we have spoken about in Committee and on Report. The first is to end the fleecehold estate model. New clauses 1, 2, 6 and 7 are relevant to that. I was glad to hear the Minister, who understands this issue, talking about going away and considering this further, but for the benefit of the Whips, what my constituents want is not for the Minister to consider it further but to ride in like a new sheriff on a white horse and sort out the fraudsters, scam artists and various cheats who are making their lives a misery. That is what we want on the Government Benches.

The fleecehold estate scandal is just like the Post Office scandal, except that it affects more people. In considering the Post Office scandal, many people have asked, “How could we not have known about this injustice? It ruined so many people’s lives for so long, yet nothing was done.” It is the same in this situation.

My constituency has lots of these new estates. Often, the first people know of the problem is when they receive a massive bill that they did not know was coming and that was not mentioned in the notes they were given when they bought the house. And, funnily enough, it was not drawn to their attention by the lawyers of the housebuilder, whose services they are often encouraged to use. Some of these bills are a really scary size and often escalate quickly over time. A huge number of people—more and more every day—are now affected. About 20,000 estates are affected, involving between 1 million and 1.5 million homeowners and potentially 3 million or 4 million people. According to the Competition and Markets Authority, over the past five years 80% of the freehold properties built by the 11 biggest builders have used this fleecehold model.

A lot of my residents describe it as being like paying a second council tax, except that if a local councillor is not doing a good job, they can be kicked out, but it is not possible to do that to a fleecehold landlord, no matter how badly they perform. New clause 6 would address that, and I hope that the Government will address it as the Bill progresses.

I think that everyone now knows how the fleecehold scam works. Back in the good old days, the builder would build a new estate, make sure that all the roads and so on were up to spec and pay a section 106 charge. The council would then take it over and run it, and if there was a problem, people could contact their local councillor. Under the fleecehold model, it is not so simple. In effect, there is collusion between the council and the developer. The developer agrees to hand over to a different company—it might own that company itself or hand it over to the residents—the running of many parts of the estate, be it the roads, the verges or other facilities. That means that the developer pays less in section 106, the council does not have to maintain the road and effectively they split the profits while the residents and the new tenants get the new, massive bill.

It is extremely inefficient to run things in that way in the real economy. Usually, the council goes from road to road with its verge-cutting lawnmowers—it uses one simple system. On one fleecehold estate, however, a guy drives down from Oldham, which is more than two hours away, mows a tiny bit of lawn and then leaves. It is economic madness. A lot of the charges that people are hit with involve opaque management fees for nothing. It is inefficient to run things in this way in the real world. There is a ticking time bomb here. In addition to the number of people affected by the fleecehold estates scandal, the second problem is that when things are not adopted, they do not go through a gateway where we can check whether they are up to scratch. I know from the experience of my constituency that a lot of things are done badly and then a huge bill will land on the people on these poor estates to sort out the problems in the future.

We heard all about this in Committee. I pay particular tribute to Harry Scoffin, the work of the group Free Leaseholders and the residents group HORNET—the Home Owners Rights Network. They all made a powerful case to abolish the fleecehold estates model entirely. As one witness told the Committee:

“This is my property. It is my hard-earned future…normal homebuyers are not qualified to manage estates. If we are given the right to manage, if we are looking at a development of over 100 homes, it is really hard to get in touch with 100 people who will agree and be on the same page. It is not workable.”––[Official Report, Leasehold and Freehold Reform Public Bill Committee, 16 January 2024; c. 54-55, Q133-134.]

I will give a few examples from my constituency. Karen is a brilliant lady who does lots of work for her community. She moved into a new Barratt home because she was bored of doing loads of DIY every weekend on her old home. She now finds herself spending massive amounts of time fighting a fleecehold company called FirstPort, a company so notorious that a national action group has been set up against it—the details can be found on Facebook—whose work I commend.

Karen explains:

“Barratt’s encouraged us to use their nominated conveyance solicitor for which in return we got £500 towards our legal bill. We were fools to do this, but money was tight…FirstPort didn’t do or arrange any grass cutting or anything by way of a service in the first two years.”

At first the bill was £35, and this year it will be £74. Karen continues:

“Our bill for the year includes: Property Damage & Public Liability Insurance…Terrorism Insurance…Grounds Maintenance…General Maintenance…FirstPort’s Management Fees”—

the most expensive item—

“Audit/External Accountant’s Certificate and Fee…General Reserve…Health and Safety Risk Assessment…This comes to £74.64 per house.”

She says:

“In the months of December, January and February each year I must spend more than a couple of days a week working on this. It’s like having a part time job. I didn’t move house to face the possibility of having to be a director of a residents’ ‘Right to Manage’ company. I want adoption…by the local council…as it used to be.”

She is right. Members may be asking, “Why are residents of this estate having to pay terrorism insurance for a fence?” That is a very good question, to which I do not know the answer.

Let me introduce Members to James—a brilliant, hard-working constituent of mine, who has had to do tons of work on the estate where he lives. He says:

“Councils should be adopting new estates”.

He says that he has done

“about 50 days’ work…over the first couple of years. We moved in in 2018 and it wasn’t really sorted until 2021—in fact it is still going on.

Had I not been proactive we would have ended up being short-changed.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady does a fantastic job of standing up for her constituents in Edinburgh West, and she is absolutely right: the UK Government should be, and are, working with the Scottish Government and private sector partners in order to ensure that sustainable growth continues to be part of the plan for Edinburgh and the wider Lothian region.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

It is clear that the Government are planning to protect councils during the transition to the new planning system, and are not planning to force councils into having an out-of-date plan by taking away their right to submit a new, up-to-date plan. Can the Secretary of State help me get this across to my local Lib Dem-run council, which is saying the exact opposite?

[Michael Gove]

I had the great pleasure of visiting Harborough on Friday, when I was able to see the enormously high regard with which my hon. Friend is held. Unfortunately, that high regard does not extend to Oadby and Wigston Borough Council or Harborough District Council—two Liberal Democrat authorities that are playing fast and loose with the planning system, and which are not putting in place the protection that their residents deserve. All too often we find that Liberal Democrat local authorities do not have plans in place, do not have planning departments that work, and let their residents down. The Liberal Democrats are the enemies of good housing policy, and that is why we need to make sure that Conservatives are in power in local government.