Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the average time is for roads in newbuild housing estates to be adopted after their construction.

My Department does not hold data on the number of housing estates that have unadopted roads or the average time for roads in newbuild housing estates to be adopted after construction.

Any decision on whether or not to adopt roads is a matter for the local highway authority. The Department for Transport has published guidance on gov.uk on Highways Adoption: The Adoption of Roads into the Public Highway, which was last updated in August 2022. It sets out the process by which new and existing roads can be adopted by highway authorities so that they become maintainable at public expense.

The government remain committed to protecting residential freeholders on private and mixed-tenure housing estates from unfair charges.

We will consult this year on implementing the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act’s new consumer protection provisions for the up to 1.75m homes that are subject to these charges, and bring these measures into force as quickly as possible thereafter. These include ensuring that homeowners who pay an estate management charge have better access to information they need to understand what they are paying for, the right to challenge the reasonableness at the First-tier Tribunal (in England), and to go to the tribunal to appoint a substitute manager.

The government is also determined to end the injustice of ‘fleecehold’ entirely and we will consult next year on legislative and policy options to reduce the prevalence of private estate management arrangements, which are the root cause of the problems experienced by many residential freeholders.