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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals on increasing the rights of leaseholders to challenge the reasonableness of their service charges.

The Governments intend to act quickly to provide homeowners with greater rights, powers, and protections over their homes by implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. These include a new right to a lease extension for leaseholders of both houses and flats, for a term of 990 years at a peppercorn ground rent on payment of a premium, and reforms 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 Act into force.