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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to require property management companies to provide tenants with a detailed breakdown of service fees when in advance of increasing fees.

We believe very strongly that service charges should be transparent, communicated effectively and that there should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong.

That is why on 12 October, we announced a property agent working group to consider options to raise standards across the property agent sector, including looking at how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers and to explore the best means to challenge fees which are unjustified. The working group will be chaired by Lord Best, along with experts from across the property sector and will report back to Government in summer 2019.