Unadopted Roads

(asked on 21st January 2022) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent assessment he has made of the impact on residents of living on an unadopted road.


Answered by
Eddie Hughes Portrait
Eddie Hughes
This question was answered on 31st January 2022

Where a road is not adopted by the local authority the responsibility for maintaining the road rests with third parties, which are usually the owners of properties that front onto it.

Estate rentcharges are one way that residents cover the unadopted road’s maintenance. However, it is not appropriate that these homeowners have limited rights to challenge these costs. The Government is committed to protecting homeowners from abuse and poor service. That is why the Government intends to legislate to ensure that the charges that resident freeholders pay towards the maintenance of communal areas, including unadopted roads, are fairer and more transparent.

To this effect, we will give freeholders on private and mixed tenure estates equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge the reasonableness of estate rentcharges, as well as a right to apply to the First-tier Tribunal to appoint a new manager to manage the provision of services.

In addition, we will ensure that where a freeholder pays a rentcharge, the rentcharge owner is not able to take possession or grant a lease on the property where the rentcharge remains unpaid for a short period of time. We will translate these measures into law when parliamentary time allows.

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.

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