Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Gareth Johnson

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

My speech will be brief, as I want to concentrate on one aspect of the Bill. Estate management companies are a massive and growing issue in my Dartford constituency. Some 7,000 new homes have been built in my constituency over the last 10 years, and they are predominantly “looked after” by management companies.

I welcome the measures in the Bill that will rightly allow residents to challenge the invoices and bills they are sent by management companies. This will help to transfer some of the power back to residents, by giving them a tool to say, “This invoice is unfair,” “This bill is not right,” or, “These accounts are not right.”

It is absolutely right that power is transferred away from management companies and into the hands of local residents, because at the moment management companies seem to do pretty much whatever they like. They can put up the charges they levy on residents way above inflation while providing a very poor service, and local residents can do very little about it. Local residents find themselves completely restricted in challenging what is, on occasion, a hideously poor service with extortionate fees. They are trodden on by the management companies.

Of course, residents question why they have to pay council tax at the same time as paying management fees, as they often find that their management fees are used to pay for, say, play parks that the whole community can use for free. They have to pay for it, they have to pay for the maintenance and they have to pay council tax, too, which seems very unfair.

In my experience, local residents want to be able to change their management company. They want to be able to switch over and to say to their management company, “No, you have not provided a good enough service. You are charging us too much money, and therefore we are going to use a different management company.” If that happens, it will help to tackle most of the problems we are experiencing with management companies. It will end the monopoly by returning competition to the system, enabling the good management companies to prevail and the poor ones to fall by the wayside.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The whole House will accept that my hon. Friend is rightly arguing for total transparency. There ought to be open-book accounting by these managing agents, so that those who are paying can see what is happening.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the amalgamation of managing agents is a dangerous trend? It means that the choice is reducing, not increasing. Given that some managing agents are very large and people’s experience of them is not very good, we ought to try to make sure that there is not this continual amalgamation and that there is a good choice of good managing agents that want to earn a better reputation.

[Gareth Johnson]

The Father of the House makes a very good point. I would like to see co-operation between companies, rather than amalgamation. In my constituency, we often see two management companies sending two people to mow the grass on the same estate. Residents look out of their window and see the grass on one side of the estate being mowed by one company and the grass on the other side of the estate being mowed by a different company. Of course, they have to pay twice for that pleasure. If the companies co-operated, that situation would not arise.

Some 20% of the people attending my surgeries are there to complain about management companies. Even a constituent of the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) came to my surgery—with two of my constituents, I hasten to add—to raise issues about management companies. She was very complimentary of the hon. Gentleman, by the way, but I put her straight. However, she was not very complimentary about the management company that she was suffering from. This problem happens in Greenwich, in Dartford and across the country, and we need this Bill to get to grips with it.