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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has in place to tackle unfair service charges in the leasehold property sector.

We believe very strongly that service charges should be transparent, communicated effectively and that there should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong. That is why on 1 April, we published the response to our recent call for evidence on ‘Protecting consumers in the letting and managing agent market’. Here proposals include establishing a working group to consider how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers and to explore the best means to challenge fees which are unjustified. As part of this work, consideration will also be given to standards around service charges and how to include them in a statutory code of practice.