Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he will take to prevent leasehold homeowners from being overcharged for the maintenance of their property.

The Government believes very strongly that service charges should be transparent and communicated effectively. The law is clear that service charges and any increase in costs must be reasonable and, where costs relate to work or services, the work or services must be of a reasonable standard. The Government believes that there should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong.

Leaseholders may make an application to the First-tier Tribunal for it to make a determination on the reasonableness of their service charges, and may continue to do so even if the freeholder is in administration. Leaseholders may also apply for an Order to the First-tier Tribunal under Section 24 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 if they consider that there are significant management failures.

We established an independent working group chaired by Lord Best to raise standards across the property sector, which also considered improvements to the transparency of service charges. The working group published its final report to Government (available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulation-of-property-agents-working-group-report and we are considering the report’s recommendations.