Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of establishing an independent body to regulate service charges for residents of all tenures.

The level of service charge that leaseholders pay depends on many factors, including the terms of a lease and the age and condition of a building.

By law, variable service charges must be reasonable. Should leaseholders wish to contest the reasonableness of their service charges they may make an application to the appropriate tribunal.

The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 includes measures designed to drive up the transparency of service charges to make them more easily challengeable if leaseholders consider them to be unreasonable. We will set out details in due course about the extensive programme of secondary legislation need to bring the various provisions of the Act into force.

Leaseholders in shared ownership properties whose leases qualify for protections set out in the Building Safety Act are protected from the costs of internal building safety defects, with a cost cap proportionate to their equity stake in the property.

All leaseholders can benefit from the Government’s Cladding Safety Scheme or Developer Scheme for the removal of unsafe cladding. The Government understands the difficulties some leaseholders are still experiencing and has committed to review how to better protect leaseholders from costs and to accelerate the pace of remediation.