On Thursday Richard secured an Adjournment Debate in Parliament on Freehold Management Charges.
There is a half-hour adjournment debate at the end of each day's sitting which provides an opportunity for an individual backbench MP to raise an issue and receive a response from the relevant Minister.
Richard's adjournment debate on Thursday and the Minister's response can be watched here.
Speaking after the debate, Richard Fuller MP said:
For several months I have championed the cause of unfair freehold management charges cause alongside Councillors Jim Weir, Sarah Gallagher, Steve Dixon, and groups including the New Cardington Residents Association.
It is long overdue that Estate Management Companies were held to account over the fees they charge and are obliged to treat residents fairly with better provision of services and full transparency over how and why the charges are decided.
I asked the Minister for a meeting to discuss my concerns with me and the other thirty Conservative MPs who co-signed the letter who are also concerned about these issues. I also asked her to confirm there would be no dilution of the government's current commitments on this and to set out the timetable to legislate for these existing commitments.
I was encouraged by the Minister's response and her plans on this and look forward to meeting with her soon.
This week, Richard also recently received a reply from the Prime Minister to his letter, co-signed by 30 Conservative MPs, stating the government's intention to act when parliamentary time allows. The letter can be read here. The letter from Richard and the 30 MPs to the Prime Minister can be found here.
Freehold service charges can cover the provision of a variety of services on an estate, such as the upkeep of play areas, communal gardens, private (unadopted) roads and communal parking areas such as parking courts.
While the requirement to make a financial contribution is usually defined in the deed of transfer when the property is first sold by the developer or by a liability that might arise as a result of an estate rent charge that forms part of the purchase contract, these fees often increase after completion of a purchase and lead to a number of issues which include a lack of transparency, where it is often unclear what the charges relate to or why they are being applied to a particular property; no accountability, where it is often difficult to obtain information about the charges, or challenge the quality of the work carried out and where there is no regulation or oversight of the practices of the management companies.
The government has in the past committed to legislate to give freeholders on private and mixed tenure estates equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge the reasonableness of estate rent charges and has also confirmed an intention to regulate letting and property management agents.
