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

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that 'right to manage' ballots are safe and secure.

The Right to Manage is a statutory process requiring all qualifying non-participating leaseholders to be invited to become a member of the Right to Manage company using a prescribed “notice inviting participation”. The company serves these notices on the leaseholders with no input from the freeholder.

Leaseholders wishing to take forward a claim will need to obtain the title documents for their building from His Majesty’s Land Registry to determine if they qualify and to provide the required details of their leases in the claim notice. The title documents will contain the names and addresses of the owners of the other flats in the building.

In order to qualify for the Right to Manage, no ballot is held, leaseholders who have setup a Right to Manage company invite other leaseholders to participate and the claim can go forward if the qualifying criteria is met. The criteria is as follows: two-thirds of the flats in the building must be held on long residential leases and leaseholders representing not less than 50% of the total number of flats in the building must participate in the claim.