Owner Occupation: Service Charges

(asked on 22nd July 2019) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to ensure fairness between freeholders and leaseholders on challenging high service charges.


Answered by
Heather Wheeler Portrait
Heather Wheeler
This question was answered on 24th July 2019

We have committed to protecting leaseholders who are suffering at the hands of rogue managing agents every day from unexpected costs or excessive fees for poor quality repairs.

We set up a working group, chaired by Lord Best, to look at regulating and professionalising property agents. This included reviewing the standards around the transparency of service charges and other fees and charges, how they are presented to consumers and putting them into a statutory code for managing agents. The working group has now completed their considerations and made recommendations to ministers. The working group’s final report was published on 18 July.

The Government will consider the recommendations set out in the report and will respond in due course

We are also looking at the future use of charges and restrictions beyond service charges – such as permission fees, administration charges and other restrictions and covenants faced by leaseholders and resident freeholders, and consider whether they should be capped or banned, and will consider this alongside the working group’s proposals.

The Government has committed to ensuring that residential freeholders who pay charges for the maintenance of communal areas and facilities on a private or mixed tenure estate can access equivalent rights to those of leaseholders to challenge their reasonableness. This will include a right to change the provider of maintenance services by applying to the tribunal for the appointment of a new manager.

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