Retirement Property Management Companies: Regulation

Will Forster Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)]

May I congratulate the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) on securing the debate and thank him for his kind remarks on my appointment? I have fond memories of shadowing him when I was in opposition. I know that he has a breadth of knowledge across housing, communities and local government, and that this issue is close to his heart. I also thank the other Members for their contributions.

I want to start by reassuring the hon. Gentleman that although this area sits with my colleague the Minister for Housing and Planning, I have been looking at it and will feed back to him on the key issues. The contributions have highlighted a really important area: the many challenges that leaseholders across the country, and especially elderly leaseholders, are facing with management companies, with flagrant disregard for people who have worked so hard to secure their property and live independently.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted the key areas where management companies continue to let people down, including issues with transparency, accountability, communication, responding to issues, raising complaints and unaudited accounts. Those are basic things that management companies should be doing. I think about elderly leaseholders and how, for many of them, if they do not have a network of family support helping them to navigate this, it can feel predatory, as the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) highlighted. When someone receives those letters with demands, it can be quite scary.

We recognise the hugely important role that the older people’s housing sector plays—I do think there is a role for it—in ensuring people have independence in later life. We want to be able to make sure of that. We are keeping people out of hospital, and that can only happen if they have a safe and secure home of their own to go back to. The Government are committed to enhancing provisions and choice across the residential market, including for older people, and that means both increasing the supply of homes to older people and, most importantly, improving their experience in their own homes.

Many residents of retirement homes have made a significant financial and, in some cases, personal contribution to their homes, and they should have the confidence that when they raise valid concerns, those should be addressed promptly and in a timely manner. When they challenge bad practice, they should get a response and they should not have to come to their Members of Parliament. Yet we are seeing so many people resorting to raising issues and parliamentarians having to name and shame management companies until any action is taken. That should not be the way that things are happening.

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I am delighted to see the Minister in her place. I am sure she will remember that the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee recently scrutinised the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill. We found it wanting; it did not go far or fast enough. The solution to the problems outlined in this debate is to properly regulate property managing agents and especially those that run retirement homes for the vulnerable elderly. Does the Minister agree that the Bill needs to come back urgently with that regulation?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I hope the Select Committee is going very well. The hon. Gentleman will know that this is an issue that we championed on the Committee to the point that, if he recalls, in many senses I harassed the former Prime Minister and the Minister for Housing, saying “When will we see the Bill? The Bill has to come before the House. It is an issue that comes into many parliamentarians’ inboxes, it is a cross-party issue and we want to see the Government act on that and make good on that commitment.”

I want to highlight that there are many good managing agents out there. This is not about saying that the issue of managing agents is all bad. There are good ones who are responsible, who respond on time and who are responsible for providing safe and secure homes for their residents. However, we know that far too often, the poor and unscrupulous managing agents let the sector down.

Managing agents play an important role in the maintenance of a wide range of multi-occupancy buildings and freehold estates. Their importance will only increase as we transition towards a commonhold future, so it is essential that we take action to drive up the standards within the sector. As the hon. Member for North Dorset and other hon. Members will know, the previous Government committed to regulating managing agents in 2018 and asked a working group chaired by Lord Best to advise them on how to do that. Yet, they failed to respond to the group’s final report, which was published in July 2019. We have moved on from that. It is about how we now take those recommendations and bring an outcome for so many people, and the Government are ready to take forward a number of those recommendations.

The retirement sector has some specific arrangements in place. Many retirement housing managing agents already operate under the Association of Retirement Housing Managers’ code of practice, which sets the standards on transparency and complaints handling, but as we have heard this evening that does not seem to be working and it is about how we ensure that we are enforcing some of those key areas. Elsewhere in the sector, similar consumer protection standards are promoted through the Associated Retirement Community Operators’ consumer code for its members. I stress again: we recognise the concerns that remain in parts of the sector and are considering how we can protect consumers and residents to strengthen that and have a consistent approach.

In the recent consultation on strengthening leaseholder protections over charges and services, we consulted on powers to appoint a manager or to replace a managing agent, as well as on mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents in England. The Government will consult on the introduction of qualifications for estate and letting agents next year. We have also made it clear that we plan to introduce a code of practice this year setting out the minimum standards expected of all residential property agents. This includes estate, letting and managing agents. The Government are considering Lord Best’s report in full, and we will set out our overarching position on the regulation of estate, letting and managing agents in due course, but this has to come at a timely pace.