Harry Scoffin, Karolina Zoltaniecka, Cathy Priestley and Halima Ali gave evidence.

We are now going to hear from our seventh panel, which is Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders; Karolina Zoltaniecka, founding director of Commonhold Now; and Cathy Priestley and Halima Ali, co-ordinators of the Home Owners Rights Network. We have until 3.40 pm for this session. You are all welcome. Would you please introduce yourselves for the record?

Harry Scoffin:

Hi there. I am Harry Scoffin, founder of Free Leaseholders. I am also deputy chair of One West India Quay residents’ association—a block on the Isle of Dogs, east London.

Karolina Zoltaniecka:

Hello. I am Karolina, founder and director of Commonhold Now. I am a right-to-manage director, leaseholder and commonhold owner in Australia under what is called strata. I have been a director over there for 30 years, and I am also a forensic analyst who does audits on service charges.

Halima Ali:

Hi. I am Halima Ali. I am a joint campaign co-ordinator for the Home Owners Rights Network. We campaign for regulation and, ultimately, for adoption and for management on private estates.

Cathy Priestley:

Hi. I work with Halima. We have worked together since 2016—a little longer than the National Leasehold Campaign has existed, in fact. We both reached the same stage in our journey of horrors at about that time. We were put together by Paula Higgins at the HomeOwners Alliance. We decided that there would be other people out there who had discovered the same situation and who felt entrapped and angry about where they were—they were tied into paying estate charges, and most were unaware at the point of purchase that that was the liability they were taking on. So we set up a website, social media and so on, and we are 11,000. We have continued our journey of exploration and learned a lot during the last eight years, and I hope we can help you.

We are very grateful that you are here, Cathy. Thank you very much. I call Matthew Pennycook to start us off.

Q Thank you all for coming to give evidence. I have two questions—one for Harry and Karolina and then one for Cathy and Halima.

Harry and Karolina, we heard earlier from Professor Hopkins from the Law Commission, which had 121 recommendations on commonhold. It is clearly not feasible to add all those to the limited Bill we have in front of us at Committee stage. Professor Hopkins says there is a risk of partial commonhold legislation that might create unintended consequences. Are there any of those recommendations that we can reasonably add in that might make things easier in the future and pave the way for commonhold? That is my question to both of you.

Cathy and Halima, clause 59 in part 4 of the Bill seeks to amend the Law of Property Act 1925. Would you agree that section 121 of that Act needs to be done away with? Are we attempting to, if you like, ameliorate an historic law that should really just be freehold forfeiture and should be done away with? On part 4 generally, we have sought to introduce by amendment an RTM regime for private estates. Are there any other tweaks to part 4 that we could reasonably look to make?

Harry Scoffin:

In terms of the commonhold point, obviously, attitudinally, I have accepted that it will be seen as out of scope of the Bill. But we also have to remind ourselves that England and Wales are the only two jurisdictions in the world that persist with this fundamentally unfair system. The Law Commission—we heard from Nick Hopkins earlier—gave a big endorsement of commonhold in 2020. They flew officials out to Australia and Singapore, where I grew up and where we lived under strata title, a form of commonhold where residents are in control. But there is no point crying over spilt milk.

There is a good alternative, interim measure before second-generation commonhold eventually comes through. Bear in mind that I have been campaigning now for six years—that is six years of my life that I have wasted trying to abolish leasehold. The fact is that the time to have brought in commonhold was now. We did not even necessarily have a guarantee that this Bill would be here. After the Queen’s Speech in 2022, it was dropped at the last minute because of pressure from No. 10. So I am not going to hold my breath for commonhold.

However, one thing we can do, which is a pragmatic halfway-house compromise, is to say that all new leasehold flats come with a share of the freehold. That still persists with the leasehold system, but residents have control from day one. They are like Alan Sugar on “The Apprentice”: if they are being ripped off, they say, “You’re fired,” and they get a better company in—that is capitalism, that is choice and that is the right way forward for now if we are not doing commonhold, which is obviously too meaty.

Secondly, all new leases must be 990 years. At the moment, shared ownership leases under the new model lease through Homes England and the Greater London Authority must be 990 years. I think it is obscene that, after this Bill comes in, people can buy a brand-new flat from one of these developers and be hit with a 99 or 125-year lease. They need to be able to get a 990-year lease from the beginning, given that Parliament has already got rid of ground rents—two years ago, it got rid of ground rents—and our argument is that the value in the freehold is now valueless.

Ground rents have gone, so why do you not just require developers to hand over a freehold with a resident management company? I understand that Matthew Pennycook is halfway there with an amendment to bring in resident management companies; we just need the freehold. If we do not have the freehold, we will allow the expensive middleman, the rip-off freeholder, to have some form of control going forward. I know of developments with an RMC, where you might think, “Bob’s your uncle, they’ve got control,” yet they are still being ripped off on things like insurance, even though they appoint the managing agent.

From that point of view, let us not let perfect be the enemy of the good, but leasehold must stop and, with leasehold, we must get rid of its toxic forms so that everyone has a share of the freehold from day one. As we heard from Nick Hopkins, it would be much easier for those guys to convert to commonhold later, but we should give people the ability to have the freehold to begin with.

It is not just me who says that; in 2006, an academic who is on the Commonhold Council—this is in my written submission—expressed the view that, if people have super-long leases of 990 years and zero ground rent, it is asking nothing of developers to hand over the freehold, because the freehold is valueless. They might as well give the freehold, as opposed to expecting leaseholders to go through the rigmarole, stress and cost of buying it later. Also—we might get on to this later—getting 50% of a large block is impossible, so doing that is absolutely the right thing.

Another point is that the market for leasehold flats has collapsed, so the gap between the average price of a house and that of a flat is at its widest in England in 30 years. The fact is that buyers have woken up to the toxicity of leasehold, particularly after Grenfell and the cladding situation. They have worked out that this is a hideously one-sided deal. It is like the sub-postmasters, this idea that, every way you turn, people say, “You signed the contract. You’re responsible for the shortfalls. That’s the law, that’s the contract,” but it is so hideously one-sided.

If you can do only one thing to the Bill, even though it will not directly help existing leaseholders, it should be to say that all new flats must be share of freehold with a resident management company. Give us control of our homes, our lives and our money, please. It is 22 years since the last Act. Let’s do this.

Q Halima and Cathy, on part 4 and rent charges—unless you have something to say, Karolina. I am leaving it to you to self-police.

Karolina Zoltaniecka:

The Bill is very welcome. It does remove a few of the barriers to commonhold, but I feel that a few more things could be done, through amendments, to take steps towards commonhold and to make it easier to convert once we enfranchise and buy the freehold. We could lower the agreement rate from 100% to 75%. They have that in Australia already; you only need that amount to have a special resolution. There is already a trial for 20 blocks in the country. We cannot say it is not working, because it is working.

There is a lot of miscommunication around commonhold in the industry. There could be an education and awareness campaign. The Bill could also be amended to introduce a sunset clause for existing flats. There could be some sort of agreement between the commercial and the leasehold residential blocks to pave the way for how this will be defined when we get to commonhold and people can convert. That would prepare people and get them ready, in practical terms, for how to run and maintain their blocks. There could be long-term maintenance plans and we could give people real, practical skills in how to do that.

Commonhold is so much easier. Having a strata, I know that. You do not have complex laws. You talk to each other and work problems and disputes out. You have meetings. Laws are prescribed, so it is easy for people to know what to do each step of the way. I do believe that there are things that could be done with commonhold in the Bill to pave the way and say that we have a future with commonhold and it will happen en masse.

Q Thank you. Halima and Cathy on part 4, please?

Halima Ali:

Overall, I want to say that the model of maintenance that has been implemented is a scam, and all this Bill is really doing is legitimising the scam. Homeowners are being fleeced. This needs to be brought under control. In terms of the Law of Property Act, this is a positive step, but I would argue as a homeowner that a management company should not have its foot on my neck. This is my property. It is my hard-earned future for my family and kids, and no management company should have any rights over it. I feel that the model should be abolished altogether. There are two different tiers—fixed rent charges and variable rent charges—that are being allowed to continue in the private estate model. This needs to be abolished altogether.

Cathy Priestley:

I do not really have anything to add except to say, would all the measures in the Bill really be necessary if the fundamental, underlying problem of private estate management was addressed? The estates we are talking about are not gated; they are not private. They contain public facilities, public open space, play parks and community centres. They might have private sewage systems and pumping stations. They almost always have sustainable urban drainage systems, because that is the way that flooding is mitigated these days. In the past, all these areas would have been adopted by the local authorities, but they are not being. If they were, there would not be any need for regulating managing agents or for the abolition of section 121.

Q I agree with you about the underlying point, and we may seek to address that, but if we have to work with this new regulation of estate management regime, are there any ways you would like to see it strengthened or tightened?

Cathy Priestley:

It would be helpful for those who are on truly private estates and who do have private management, but we do not see any reason why homebuyers on estates should suddenly become estate managers for their local community.

Halima Ali:

It is exactly as Cathy said: normal homebuyers are not qualified to manage estates. If we are given the right to manage, if we are looking at a development of over 100 homes, it is really hard to get in touch with 100 people who will agree and be on the same page. It is not workable. The Government are insisting on regulating, but realistically the Bill is not doing anything for us. Literally all it is doing is maintaining a scam.

I am mindful of the fact that we will have to bring this session to a conclusion at 3.40 pm and five more Members have indicated that they would like to speak, so you can time yourselves accordingly. I will start with Andy Carter.

Q I will be brief. Cathy and Halima, can I pick up on your point about estate management? Do you have any examples of members of your forum who are paying fees on a regular basis, but there is no delivery of management? Do you have examples of where things are just not happening?

Halima Ali:

I am the perfect example. I have living on a fleecehold estate for 13 years.

Q Can you tell us what is not happening?

Halima Ali:

There is no management happening at all.

Q What should be happening?

Halima Ali:

It should be managed.

Q Yes, but tell us what you would expect to be happening.

Halima Ali:

The management company should respond in a timely manner, do the work and communicate with the residents. The situation is horrendous. On our estate alone, we are paying £30,000 to maintain a field that is half the size of a football pitch. That makes no logical sense.

Q So they are not cutting the grass and they are not tidying—

Halima Ali:

They are cutting it, but at a substandard level. On top of that, the grounds that they are maintaining have not even been built to a standard for local councils to adopt.

Q Have you talked to the council about its ability to be involved in this?

Halima Ali:

I have had meetings with the head of planning. I have raised so many complaints.

Q What did the council say?

Halima Ali:

They just do not want to know, literally, because they are not regulated and it is not their concern. They just will not do anything.

Q The problem we will find, if we are not careful, in putting through legislation that allows the right to manage is that there is still no route to get somebody to make things happen if you have a council that does not want to get involved. Who is the ultimate person that you can say—

Halima Ali:

It has to be central Government. They need to regulate that councils need to start adopting all new build estates going forward and in the situation that we are stuck in.

Q Halima and then Cathy, let me pick up this business of the fleecehold estates, as you refer to them. They are a relatively new thing in leasehold; they were not there in the same way 20-odd years ago when we were passing the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002. They have been seen as a revenue stream for developers. Do you think that it would make sense for local councils, when they sell public land for housing development, to insist that that public land should not be used for a private estate model in this way? Developers can of course build the homes and you can buy them, and they can make their profit from the payments that you make to buy those homes, but they should not then have an ongoing source of revenue from the substandard management, as you described it, of the estate.

I have one estate in my constituency where they were charging residents for the management of land that they did not even own. It took us months to get the documentation to prove that they did not own that land. The fence that they had mended had actually been mended by the council. Other things like that are going on, but if that restriction were put in place in the first place, they would not be able to do it, would they?

Cathy Priestley:

Our understanding is that the land belongs to the developer. It is not public until it is made public through section 106 agreements with the council.

Q I understand what you are saying, but I am referring specifically to when a council makes available land that has been publicly owned by it to developers for development and puts that restriction in place.

Cathy Priestley:

Well, yes, you would not want more and more privatisation, would you? I do not think any policy is in place that is pushing for privatisation of the management of public open spaces, is there?

Q Mr Scoffin, you talked about this issue having wasted six years of your life; I think it has only wasted about 25 years of mine, since before the 2002 Act. You spoke about future development. What would actually make it better for existing leaseholders? There are things in the Bill that I think do improve the lot of existing leaseholders, but how can we make it even better?

Harry Scoffin:

There are a number of quick wins. One is to get rid of forfeiture, because that allows these freeholder overlords to extort money from ordinary people. It is not like mortgage foreclosure, where if you cannot keep up with the mortgage payments you get the difference back less the debt; with forfeiture, in theory, a freeholder could take back a £500,000 flat on a £5,000 bill. Now, what the freeholder lobby will say when they come on later is, “There are only about 80 to 90 cases a year.” That is potentially 80 to 90 homeless families a year. More important, in a way, is that it is the threat of forfeiture that gets leaseholders to go, “Oh my God, I’m going to pay that bill.”

My mum is on £33,000 a year, for a three-bed with no swimming pool, no gym and no garden. The freeholder is one of Britain’s richest men, sheltering in a tax haven in Monaco—a billionaire. Everyone who is not a leaseholder says, “Why would you pay that? That’s more than someone’s salary.” She says, “If I don’t pay it, I’ll lose the property.” So get rid of forfeiture.

Q Was forfeiture not part of the 2002 Act?

Harry Scoffin:

Yes. They draw it out. There is a process now in the courts, where you can go, “Oh, I forgot to pay it” or “Here’s the money.” The point is that it does not give leaseholders the confidence to challenge unreasonable bills. They have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads—they are being treated almost like criminals. The Law Commission recommended in 1985, in 1994 and more recently in 2006 getting rid of this iniquitous element, arguably the most feudal element of leasehold. It has not been done. The Government recently asked the Law Commission to update its 2006 report, so we know work has been done, but it is not in this Bill.

I think you spoke earlier today about this section 24 business. That is a really important issue that many Members may not be aware of. Since the Building Safety Act came in, there has been a very interesting regime about the accountable person, trying to make developers and freeholders take responsibility for their buildings. This was heard in tribunal in December—I was there—and I understand that Michael Gove has taken a personal interest in this, but there is again no guarantee that we can get the fix.

The problem is that, at the moment, any building over 18 metres cannot have a court-appointed manager, because the court-appointed manager cannot be the accountable person. It is like an aeroplane being flown with two pilots flying in completely different directions. The freeholder, who has been stripped of his management rights—because, basically, he has defrauded leaseholders or been absentee, is not doing remediation works in a timely manner, or is not giving information—will now be the accountable person. But the manager cannot manage the building, because you will have two managers for one property.

The tribunal for Canary Riverside—I add a disclaimer that this is my sister estate; we have the same freeholder, so I was there at the tribunal—said that, as much as we would like to help the leaseholders at Canary Riverside, Parliament has made it very clear that, while a non-freehold owning right to manage company or a non-freehold owning resident management company can be the accountable person, a court-appointed manager specially vetted by the tribunal is no longer allowed to be one.

What is happening at Canary Riverside is that the freeholder—the same one that we have—is looking at getting back a building that he was removed from controlling in 2016. There was even a letter from the Secretary of State to the leaseholders, which they cleverly submitted to the tribunal, saying that he was the man who passed this Act and he genuinely, honourably, had no idea that that was the implication. That is another thing, because many blocks are not going to be able to buy the freehold or be able to get right to manage. They are in a monopolistic position with these freeholders. If there is no ability to buy the freehold, you are trapped.

In our building, we cannot sell the flats. We cannot even give them away at auction. It needs to be allowed that a manager appointed under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 can be the principal accountable person where a tribunal deems it appropriate.

There is one other major point. At the moment, many people may stand to benefit from getting the right to manage or buying the freehold, with the 25% rule going up to 50%. I know that because I have campaigned for it for the last six years. Nick Hopkins at the Law Commission used to have a joke that he would probably have to take out a restraining order against me, because I really pushed on this issue. The problem is that there are so many people who would benefit from that, but if they have that plant room or that underground car park, they still will never be free. They will never be able to get the freehold or right to manage. That is something that the Law Commission already recommended. We can get that into the Bill.

Another point to note is that if you cannot participate, for whatever reason, in buying the freehold—you do not have the money to join your neighbours—in perpetuity, you will never be able to buy that share of the freehold ever again. If you cannot get the money together, you are out. That needs to be sorted. The right to participate was very popular with the Law Commission consultees. That absolutely needs to happen.

There is one last thing. Nickie Aiken MP and other MPs, such as Stephen Timms, have been pushing on this point. At the moment, to buy the freehold or get right to manage, you have to get 50%. In our building, which is 20 years old, we are very lucky that we have managed to get 82% of the leaseholders. Do you know how much work that has involved? It is cornering people in lifts, paying the £3 to the Land Registry, doing some weird investigations. It is Herculean. You have to go back to 1931 in this country to find a political party that has won a general election with 50% of the vote, so why is it fair for residents who are being ripped off to be told, “You need to get 50%”? That should come down, because most big blocks, particularly the newer ones, will never hit 50%, and given that the Government are talking about a long-term housing plan and about building up in the cities, we have to make flat living work. We have the second lowest proportion of flats of any country in Europe, after Ireland—

Q Sorry, can I just ask you to amplify what you were saying about the 50%? I understand the difficulty, if you have 900 people in a high-rise block, to co-ordinate to get 450 plus one to do it, but surely many of those apartments will be buy to let, so you may not ever be able to meet or get in touch with the actual leaseholder. You are going to be able to do that only through a subtenant, and that makes it almost impossible, doesn’t it?

Harry Scoffin:

Some leaseholder advocates say, “We do not touch the 50%,” and I do not understand them for it, but the fact is that they just say, “Give leaseholders more information.” I have to be honest: even once you have got in touch with guys from Singapore, Hong Kong, the middle east and all the rest of it, when you try to explain what leasehold is, it goes over their head; when you say “right to manage”, it goes over their head. They say, “Well, I’ve bought the flat. I don’t need to get involved.” And then you say, “It’s £2,000 or £3,000. We all need to do it—each—to club together.” These guys are mean—some of them—and they are not going to get involved. So the fact is that at least on right to manage, where you are not compulsorily acquiring the freehold interest, it should at least come down to 35%, in line with the suggestion from Philip Rainey KC, whom you will be hearing from on Thursday. The London housing and planning committee also said that 50% is very, very difficult in large developments, particularly in London. So that does need to be thought about at least—it coming down on right to manage.

Ms Ali wants to come in.

Halima Ali:

I just want to make this specific point. It is clear that rules and regulations regarding leasehold and RTM are not working. It is very—what is the word, Cathy?

Q Unfair? Unjust? Inequitable?

Halima Ali:

It is very unfair and inadequate, and it makes no logical sense for freeholders on a private estate to be given the same rules and regulations when it is not working for leaseholders.

Q It is the imbalance of power.

Halima Ali:

Yes.

Q Harry, can I just ask you a couple of things? On the forfeiture point, is it your view that there is absolutely nothing in the Bill to prevent the forfeiture issue?

Harry Scoffin:

There are not specific provisions to improve the position on forfeiture. I would love it to be abolished, but if we have to have some form of mechanism that is still going to be called “forfeiture”, at least say that if it happens, the equity is returned to the departing leaseholder when the flat is sold and it is just the debt that the freeholder gets back. The idea that he gets a windfall is obscene. That has to go. At the moment, forfeiture can kick in at £350, so what some law firms are doing is, for a breach of lease, a 350-quid charge, so forfeiture already kicks in there. So bring that up. Some people have suggested £5,000. I would go even higher—£5,000 is the figure for personal bankruptcy proceedings—and bring it up to £10,000.

There will be these freeloading freeholders that will come before you today or on Thursday and say, “Well, if these leaseholders are not paying, the whole building is going to fall to rack and ruin. It’ll be like this country in the 1970s where the bins weren’t getting collected and bodies were piling up. You’ve got to keep the lights on in a block of flats.” What you say to them is, “Sue for a money judgment.”

Do not worry: I know what to say to them. That is fine.

Harry Scoffin:

Yes, you know. Okay, good. The point is that we do not need forfeiture, but if you cannot abolish it, at least get rid of the windfall.

Q Thank you. I will ask a second question, if I may. You mentioned the issue of the pump room. Can you explain very briefly what the issue of the pump room is? Is this for a conversion or an enfranchisement claim? Where is the pump room issue coming into play?

Harry Scoffin:

It is for mixed-use buildings that would otherwise benefit from the 25% non-residential premises limit going up to 50%. Let us say that you have an underground car park, a plant room or maybe, more recently, a heat network. Basically, because you are now linked, almost like Siamese twins, with a hotel, for example, or some shops, under the current 2002 Act for right to manage and even the 1993 Act for buying your freehold, you are out. So even though the Law Commission and the Government mean well, saying, “We’re going to liberate mixed-use leaseholders,” for many of those mixed-use leaseholders, where they are completely linked with the commercial, it is game over; you will never be able to qualify. That definitely needs to be revisited because the Government will not get any political benefit from moving, rightly, from 25% up to 50% and even to mandatory leasebacks for when you buy the commercial.

The quick argument—the Law Commission understood it—is that at the moment, the plant room will normally be managed, yes, by the hotel, but the freeholder for the flats will appoint a managing agent who will also have access to the plant room. We are not changing that position. The only difference is that the managing agent that the freeholder appointed, who has access to the plant room, would now be working directly for people like my mum. So it is not disrupting—we are not going to become hoteliers. We are not going to become shop owners. If we rely on a service and are paying for it—53%, mind—we should have access to it, but the key thing is that we need the right to manage. Without right to manage, or without buying the freehold, you are, literally, perpetually in this abusive relationship with a freeholder who has your cheque book and is spending it how he likes, whether that is reasonable or not. That is a fact.

On the point about section 24, that needs to be revisited so that the manager, where a tribunal deems it appropriate, can be the accountable person. In our building, we have mobilised—ironically, it is over 50% of the leaseholders. We now face going back to them—with their cash, by the way—and saying, “We can’t now get one because of this unintended consequence of the Building Safety Act”. That is a quick bit of drafting— I have spoken to lawyers about it. It would be very easy for you guys and that would help, particularly on cladding developments, where the cladding is not getting done because the freeholders are sitting on their hands. You need an officer of the court who is going to turn around the development and be accountable.

Karolina Zoltaniecka:

Can I say something about the right to manage? At the moment, the process is so complex. There are three notices that need to be served. I believe there needs to be only one, to say to the freeholder, “We are taking over the right to manage and this is the date we are going to do it on”, and that is it. There are solicitors who specialise in analysing notices to pick holes in them to prolong the process, so that leaseholders give up, and costs just go up and up. And I completely agree with the forfeiture point from Harry. It is unnecessary and a breach of lease, and especially, arrears can be taken to the county court to recover if the arrears are real.

Q Is leasehold ownership home ownership?

Harry Scoffin:

No, it is a tenancy scam. You do not own anything. You own the right to sell on a bit of space in a flat you occupy. You do not own, even though you may have paid a freehold price and you thought you owned it—you do not.

Q Given that the Bill does not ban new leasehold flats—70% of leaseholds happen to be flats—is leasehold, the feudal system, still alive and kicking?

Harry Scoffin:

Completely, because—

In England and Wales?

Harry Scoffin:

Yes, because people are coining it in and they want to keep it that way. I understand that a political decision was made by No. 10 not to have commonhold in the Bill and not to say even “a share of freehold”. Let us do that. Let us work with the Government to get share of freehold in. That is maybe an English fudge, but at least it gets us halfway to the ideal of commonhold, whenever it comes. I am not going to hold my breath for commonhold, sadly, because we have wasted the last seven years talking about it.

Keep going.

Karolina Zoltaniecka:

I would not give up on it; it is well worth waiting for.

Harry Scoffin:

We need share of freehold in the meantime, at least.

Q Part 4 of the Bill is called “Regulation of estate management”, which I think is a particular area of interest for you. You said that it all starts at the beginning, when councils and developers decide to do that. Do you think that getting control of that is an essential part of the effective regulation of estate management?

Halima Ali:

I do not agree that it is. All it is doing is creating a two-tier system where a set of homeowners, like myself, living on a private estate are dealing with this situation, whereas other homeowners are not. I do not see how regulating it is helping, because overall, the management company still get to set the fee.

Q Actually, I was trying to say that we should stop it altogether because—

Halima Ali:

Oh right, sorry—

I was not being very clear, I am sorry—it is my job to be clear, not yours. I think what you were saying is that this is trying to fix the problem, but the root of the problem is that councils are permitting this to go ahead.

Halima Ali:

Yes, absolutely.

Q I am sure we will have a debate about what is and is not in scope of this Bill, in terms of that very important issue, but I wanted to hear you say that that is a crucial part of what you would understand by effective regulation of estate management.

Cathy Priestley:

Yes. There are other detrimental effects on estates, other than those on the homebuyers, because non-adopted areas are not built up to adoption standard, so there is a quality issue. There is also a community cohesion issue, if you have one lot of people paying for everybody else’s open space.

Q The whole issue of adoption may or may not be in scope, but there were some other suggestions that you had, such as that estate management charges may not include fees for areas that are open to the general public. You feel—this is on your website—that someone can walk down a grass verge or by some trees and you are paying for that twice, through your council tax and through estate management charges. Is that right?

Halima Ali:

That is correct. I will make a specific point; I am sure this is the situation nationwide as well. When I purchased my property, the council tax for band C was around £1,000. Currently, it is at £2,000. If you look at that and the average family income, there is a big disparity. How are we able to afford all this? Ultimately, we are paying council tax twice. It is unfair on us. It is unfair on vulnerable people who generally do not understand all these arbitrary rules and regulations and who are coming to us for support.

Cathy Priestley:

Most of the people in our group were unaware of what they were getting into. They are unaware of the unlimited liability, because this cannot be capped. It is what it is, and it costs what it costs.

Q I think we can look at strengthening some of the provisions at the start and at the end, in terms of the rights if someone wants to sell their property and how people are leant on if they have not paid all the fees, affecting their ability to sell their property. I know we have limited time, but another aspect is the compensation for those who suffer these charges. If we cannot look within scope at adoption and just cancelling the whole lot, what are your thoughts, since there will be a separation of charges and a new cost structure, about enabling people who have estate management fees for common areas to deduct that off their council tax? Essentially, you would not pay twice. There will be a number of those costs that generally would be seen as being covered by your council tax in other circumstances. Do you think the Bill should include a provision where you would be entitled to pay only once for those by deducting that cost from your council tax?

Cathy Priestley:

I do not know what councils would think about that. About 50% of the estate charges are just administrative fees. Councils could do it much cheaper. I do not think it would be acceptable to councils, but it would be great for us, yes.

It would make them adopt them quicker though, wouldn’t it?

Cathy Priestley:

It certainly would, yes.

Finally, we have two minutes left—Marie, please.

We need to be careful on this. Councils are constantly picking up bills from other people, and these costs are the costs of poor developers. There are different ways of dealing with different aspects of this. One is safety development. To take a leaf out of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, you design, you develop, you construct—for use, maintenance and everything. Why not do the same for future housing developments, so that we do not have estates built without roads or pavements or these nice park features that would be lovely for children to play out on?

Nobody’s going to maintain them and they end up like a rubbish tip. People tip there, because nobody cleans it up. And what happens? More people tip there. No developer should be allowed to develop things that cannot be put right. They should pick up the costs on development, so people know what they have got. Then you have the old properties—I call them asset-rich and purse-poor. The properties are worth a fortune. They are beautiful big old houses—you would give your right arm for one of them—but when it comes to maintaining all this and their paths, the older people cannot do it. To bring that up to standard is a cost. It is not a cost for the council to pick up.

Marie, is there a question?

No, I was picking up on that point. The lady present understood it. She was saying that it is not that the councils are paying twice for something; everybody looks—

Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the allotted time to ask this panel questions. Apologies, Marie. On behalf of the Committee. I thank all our witnesses for coming in.