Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Kohler and Matthew Pennycook

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

15. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of service charges on residents in social housing.

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

The Government recognise the considerable financial strain that rising service charges are placing on leaseholders, including those whose landlord is a social housing provider. As the hon. Gentleman will know, variable service charges must, by law, be reasonable. Their reasonableness can already be challenged at the appropriate tribunal and the housing ombudsman can investigate complaints about the fairness of service charges made by shared owners, as well as tenants of social housing landlords, but the Government are exploring what more can be done to give leaseholders the protection that they need from unaffordable service charge increases.

[Mr Kohler]

Many leaseholders in my constituency live in properties where Clarion housing association is the freeholder. This year’s service charge is on average almost 50% higher than the original estimate and for some on the High Path estate it is over £1,000 more. Does the Minister agree that leaseholders deserve transparency, not shock bills? What more can be done to give the housing ombudsman the power to demand compensation payments?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that supplementary question and assure him that I share his deep concern about the pressure on the household budgets of shared owners in his constituency, and others across the country, as a result of rising variable service charges. In addition to the routes to redress I have just set out, I draw his and the House’s attention to the measures in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 that are designed to drive up the transparency of service charges to make them more easily challengeable if leaseholders consider them unreasonable. Further detail about our plan to bring those and other provisions in the Act into force can be found in the written ministerial statement made on 21 November.