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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he will take to protect leaseholders against sharp rises in costs from management companies running their housing scheme.

The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service.

The law is clear that service charges must be reasonable and, where costs relate to work or services, the work or services must be of a reasonable standard. We believe very strongly that any charges to leaseholders should be transparent and communicated effectively, and that there should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong. Leaseholders may make an application to the First-tier Tribunal to make a determination on the reasonableness of their service charges. Furthermore Section 24 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 allows leaseholders to apply to the appropriate tribunal to appoint a manager to take over management where there has been a significant failure by a previous managing agent or landlord.

To help protect buyers of new homes, we are bringing forward provision for the New Homes Ombudsman scheme in the Building Safety Bill to provide dispute resolution to, and determine complaints by, buyers of new build homes against developers. The New Homes Ombudsman will help improve redress for homebuyers and the quality of new homes.