Leasehold Reform

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Helen Hayes

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Tomorrow, I will meet my constituent Luke Thomas, who is attending a drop-in in Parliament to raise awareness about the skin cancer melanoma. Luke first contacted me in 2020. He has stage 4 skin cancer, diagnosed after he had bought his first home, a shared ownership leasehold flat in my constituency. Knowing that his cancer is now incurable, Luke decided that he wanted to move back to Wales, to be able to enjoy more precious time with family and friends and to draw on their support when he needed it.

However, Luke is one of many, many leaseholders to spend years effectively trapped by a system, the deficiencies of which were further compounded by the cladding scandal following the horrific Grenfell Tower fire. Luke’s flat has been effectively unsellable, and he faced the dreadful and unacceptable situation of precious, limited time slipping away, unable to move forward with his life. Two and a half years later, Luke’s housing association has finally agreed to an exceptional buyback, but that is not a system, and Luke should never have been placed in that situation.

Luke’s story is heartrending, but it is not unique. I have many constituents who are still living with the consequences of the interaction between the feudal leasehold system and the scandal of building safety exposed by the horrific Grenfell Tower fire. Many have been trapped by the inability of their freeholder to undertake intrusive surveys and fire safety works in order to secure an EWS1 certificate, without which their home is effectively worthless. Some constituents, such as Luke, need to move for compassionate reasons; others, because their job has changed. I have constituents who have had a family and are now overcrowded in their leasehold homes, who have been unable to move for many years because of the lack of an EWS1 certificate or the completion of fire safety works. What started as the fulfilment of a dream—the security and stability of their own home, and the first rung on the property ladder—has become a living nightmare.

The Government’s delay in bringing forward leasehold reform is inexcusable. I was on the then Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee in 2019 when we published the report referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Committee’s Chair. On a cross-party basis and on the basis of the evidence, that report set out recommendations, including that Government should make commonhold the predominant form of tenure for flats, ban the most egregious practices and introduce some protections against catastrophic costs for leaseholders.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, and she speaks passionately about her constituent Luke wanting to move back to Wales. My constituents have faced similarly terrible experiences as a result of the leasehold system. The Welsh Government have taken some important steps in Wales, virtually eliminating new leasehold for houses and reducing ground rents on new leases to a peppercorn, but does my hon. Friend agree that we need to see ambitious reform from the UK Government on an England and Wales basis so that all our constituents can get out of these terrible situations?

[Helen Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is unfathomable that the Government, when faced with the urgency and magnitude of this crisis—affecting not just a few people but thousands across the country—have failed to act with urgency. It is very welcome that the Welsh Government have stepped up to the scale of the challenge.

The Committee’s report also included practical measures, such as introducing a standard form for presenting charges for leaseholders so that that information is easy to understand. This is about not just the major, catastrophic problems that leaseholders face, but the day-to-day complexity of a system that is difficult to understand and administer. However, the Government have taken next to no action on those recommendations. I received an email last week from a constituent who has saved for years to buy her first flat in an area that she loves, but has been told by multiple solicitors that they are unable to act in relation to the conveyancing because of the uncertainty created by the Building Safety Act 2022. As such, I specifically ask the Minister to look urgently at that issue and whether there is a need for further guidance to conveyancing solicitors, because new legislation designed to make building safer should not have the unintended consequence of preventing sales moving forward.

Finally, I want to raise the plight of leaseholders living in flats that have district heating systems. Such leaseholders are liable for a proportion of the costs of the heating of their whole block. They have very little control over the consumption of energy, which is influenced by the age of the communal boiler; the temperature that other residents choose to maintain in their homes; the hot water consumption of their neighbours; and the date on which their landlord chooses to switch the heating on and off each year. Because gas for district heating systems is often purchased in bulk in advance, those leaseholders are only now seeing the sharp increases in bills that other customers experienced last year. Inexplicably, there is no Government support at all for customers of district heating systems, and so many of them are now facing completely unaffordable heating bills in addition to the other, often extortionate costs associated with being a leaseholder. This problem is pushing leaseholders into poverty.

There are many thousands of leaseholders across the country—thousands of families facing the uncertainty and anxiety of extortionate and unpredictable costs, building safety defects and sharp practices. The Government’s failure to act with urgency to help them is a complete dereliction of duty. It is time that they stepped aside for a Labour Government who will deliver the reform that leaseholders so desperately need.