Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment she has made of the implications for her Department's policies of the recommendations in the report entitled Homes for All published by the Church of England and the Nationwide Foundation in April 2024.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
As part of the process of developing and implementing housing and planning policy, the government engages with a wide range experts and organisations. Our plans to tackle the housing crisis, including by building 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament and delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation, will address several important points raised in the report in question. The government also intends to publish a long-term housing strategy and we will consider reports such as this one, in developing it.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when she plans to publish the report of the Older People's Housing Taskforce.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Government will provide an update in relation to the Older People’s Housing Taskforce report in due course.
Asked by: Rebecca Smith (Conservative - South West Devon)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will publish a timetable for the coming into force of provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
As outlined in the King’s Speech, the Government will act quickly to provide homeowners with greater rights, powers, and protections over their homes by implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. This includes a new valuation scheme that leaseholders must follow to calculate how much they should pay to enfranchise and includes measures such as removing the requirement to pay marriage value, capping the treatment of ground rents at 0.1% of the freehold value in the calculation, and prescribing rates for the calculation. A small number of provisions came into force on 24 July, two months after Royal Assent, relating to rentcharge arrears, building safety legal costs and the work of professional insolvency practitioners.
The Government will further reform the leasehold system by enacting remaining Law Commission recommendations relating to enfranchisement and the Right to Manage, tackle unregulated and unaffordable ground rents, and removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture. We will also reinvigorate commonhold through a comprehensive new legal framework and ban the sale of new leasehold flats so commonhold becomes the default tenure.
The Government has made clear it intends to publish draft legislation on leasehold and commonhold reform in this session so that it may be subject to broad consultation and additional parliamentary scrutiny.