Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he plans to include in the legislative proposals on housing announced in the Queen’s Speech reforms to provide freeholders on private and mixed tenure estates with (a) equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge the reasonableness of estate rent charges and (b) rights to apply to the First-tier Tribunal to appoint a new manager to manage the provision of services covered by estate rent charges.

The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. Where people pay estate rent charges it is not appropriate that these homeowners have limited rights to challenge these costs.

That is why the Government intends to legislate to give freehold homeowners who pay estate rent charges the right to challenge their reasonableness and to go to the tribunal to appoint a new management company if necessary.

We will also consider the option of introducing a Right to Manage for residential freeholders once we have considered the Law Commission’s report and recommendations on changes to the Right to Manage for leaseholders.

The Government has brought forward legislation in the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill to set ground rents on newly created leases to a genuine ‘peppercorn’ rate of only one peppercorn per year or effectively zero financial value. This will be the first part of seminal two-part legislation to implement reforms in this Parliament.