Property Service Charges

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)]

I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) on securing this debate. I know that leaseholders across the country will be watching this debate very closely, because the cost of being a leaseholder has contributed to the cost of living challenges that so many of our constituents have faced for such a long time.

My leaseholder action group in Kensington and Bayswater, which the Minister kindly met with recently, regularly shares stories of escalating, unaccountable and untransparent service charges levied by managing agents that they have no control over. At worst, the current system can represent a cartel, with a broken market in which competition between managing agents is undermined by monopoly-type relationships with some freeholders and a broken connection between those who pay the bills and those who deliver the services.

The impact can be devastating. One of my constituents, Adriana, has taken her housing provider to tribunal three separate times simply to get clarity on how her service charge was calculated. Each time she has won, but the housing provider is still not providing the information; indeed, it is now offering to withdraw all the charges, rather than provide that information. That is not transparency: it relies on the assumption that the other residents, many of whom are elderly or financially strained, will not have the resources to challenge. Rather than giving up, Adriana now supports other residents in helping them to understand their rights and how to contest these unfair practices. Her determination is admirable, but it should not fall to residents themselves to protect one another from a system that is supposed to protect them.

Another group of residents who speak to me regularly about these issues, who live in a building called Shaftesbury Place, have been hit with crippling increases to their charges after a 2,489% increase in their building insurance premium. That annual cost, which is up from £15,000 to £375,000 a year, has been passed directly to the leaseholders through their service charges. The housing provider says that the freeholder procured the insurance—the residents have seen evidence suggesting otherwise—but the confusion over who procured the insurance and how the premium was calculated has left leaseholders caught in the middle. The justification appears to rest on a fire risk assessment that many residents believe is flawed, but the result is that ordinary homeowners, including shared ownership homeowners trying to climb the ladder, have been left with unaffordable bills and no clear line of accountability for how those costs have been allowed to spiral.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for explaining the problems so clearly, problems that are shared by my elderly residents in Aire Valley Court and Sutton Court in Bingley. They too have seen above-inflation rises in service charges and a lack of transparency about accounts, with no evidence to justify them. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now time that we bring in licensing and stronger regulation of managing agents such as FirstPort?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

I will see what I can do, Madam Deputy Speaker. Property service charges and the behaviour of the companies that levy them are causing real distress across the country. I thank the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul) for her speech setting out those challenges.

In Colchester, I have heard from residents in Orchard Gardens, Colne View and Kingswood Heath who are being charged astonishing amounts—often thousands of pounds a year—for services that are either poorly delivered or not delivered at all. Many of those homes are managed by one company, and the House could guess that that company is FirstPort. When I walked into the Chamber, FirstPort had been named 39 times in the Chamber this year, but I imagine that has doubled in the course of this afternoon. It claims to be an “award- winning property management service” that

“makes sure customers feel safe and happy in their homes.”

I think we all have a little bit of news for FirstPort.

Retired residents in Orchard Gardens showed me demands for payments for services that they never received or for which they had already paid. Residents at the Colne View development have faced a 15-year battle over neglect, overcharging and obfuscation. They have faced extortionate service charges—sometimes doubling in a year—yet their buildings are left mouldy, unsafe and unclean. They feel bullied, belittled and beyond hope that they will ever resolve what has become a living nightmare. I am pleased to say that one of those residents, Chia, was able to come into Parliament last week to give some evidence to a panel of MPs organised by my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (David Pinto-Duschinsky) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake), who have been working on this issue for some time. I hope the Minister will consider the evidence that was gathered.

[Anna Dixon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?