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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of implementing a Dispute Resolution Scheme, similar to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, to resolve service charge disputes between landlords and tenants in social housing.

By law, variable service charges must be reasonable. Overcharging through service charges is completely unacceptable. Should tenants of private registered providers of social housing 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 designed to drive up the transparency of service charges and to make them more easily challengeable if leaseholders consider them to be unreasonable.

On 4 July, my Department published a consultation on Strengthening Leaseholder Protections for charges and services. It can be found on gov.uk here.

The consultation seeks views on how to implement the relevant measures in the Act, and includes proposals to extend aspects of it to social housing tenants.

I otherwise refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement made on 4 July (HCWS780).