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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will undertake a review of the estate agency sector to assess the effectiveness of existing legislation on ensuring (a) transparency in pricing, (b) accurate descriptions of properties and (c) bans on rogue (i) lettings and (ii) sales agents.

The government is committed to ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service at the hands of unscrupulous property agents.

Legislation is currently enforced by National Trading Standards’ Lettings and Estate Agency Team, who have the power to issue warnings and banning orders to rogue estate and letting agents.

The previous government committed to regulate the property agent sector in 2018 and asked a working group chaired by Lord Richard Best to advise them on how best to do it.

However, they failed to respond to the recommendations set out in the working group’s 2019 Regulation of Property Agents: working group report which can be found on gov.uk here.

Managing agents play a key role in the maintenance of multi-occupancy buildings and freehold estates, and their importance will only increase as we transition toward a commonhold future. As a result, we are looking again at the 2019 report.

We will set out our full position on regulation of estate, letting and managing agents in due course.