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If you are a flat owner wondering why your service charges are too high, the service from your managing agent is lacking, or why you are in despair at what you can do about it, now you know. It’s your own fault.
Or at least that’s what you may think if you paid attention to the comments from the Government in a recent House of Lord’s debate.
The debate concerned service charges and other matters relating to residential blocks of flats. It was the first time for many years that issues affecting over 3 million leasehold flats have been ventilated for any length in Parliament. Baronness Gardner was duly recognised and congratulated by her Peers for securing the important debate, which had been prompted by the efforts of LKP and the FPRA.
Baroness Gardner raised a shopping list of items which are of serious concern to leaseholders around the country. Baroness Maddock, Baroness Greengross, Baroness Miller, Lord Best, and Lord McKenzie all spoke with a degree of professional and private knowledge about the “considerable problems” caused by the leasehold system. Unfortunately, the Government do not share that view. During the Government’s response, Baroness Hanham made the astonishing remarks:
“I do not think that it is for government to intervene any further. People who buy leasehold properties first need to be very careful with the lease they are buying, to know what they are buying, to know what are the service charge implications and management implications. They need to know whether the managing agent has been appointed by the freeholder and what responsibility they take if that managing agent is not standing up to proper scrutiny.”
The Government’s lack of enthusiasm to offer greater protection to the nation’s flat owners was evident in the House of Commons a short time later, when the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps made no mention of leasehold regulation even though he admitted he was chairing “...a taskforce on rogue landlords in order to try to drive them out of the market.”