Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-17
Topic: Housing
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 84BA, which is in my name, and to Amendment 84G. These are, I hope, noncontroversial amendments which would level the playing field—which is currently tilted in favour of freeholders—for leaseholders Amendment 84BA addresses an irregularity concerning the consideration of recovery of a landlord’s costs from leaseholders as administrative charges. At the moment, a landlord can recover their costs for appearing before a tribunal or court as an administration charge where a covenant exists in the lease, without the leaseholder being able to ask the tribunal or court to consider the reasonableness of the costs, which they are able to do when the costs are recovered via the service charge. This is potentially unfair and can discourage leaseholders from exercising their rights to seek a determination that service charges or other payments are payable and reasonable, where they are aware that the landlord can recover his costs in this way through this loophole. The proposed amendment would enable the court or tribunal to consider on application whether it is reasonable for a landlord to recover all or part of the costs of appearing before it as an administration charge, where the lease allows this. At the moment, that cannot be done This amendment would therefore be similar to the existing legislation which enables tribunals and courts, on application by a tenant or leaseholder, to limit a landlord’s costs of appearing before a court or tribunal where they seek to recover them through service charges. This is not to say that a landlord should not be able to recover his costs, but rather that a tribunal or court should be able to consider whether it is reasonable so to do Amendment 84G would give leaseholders the right to obtain from their landlord contact information for other leaseholders in a shared block, for the purposes of obtaining statutory recognition of a tenants’ association. This may be relevant to some of the issues raised by my noble friend Lady Gardner. To put this in context, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 allows a tenants’ association made up of qualifying tenants to seek statutory recognition. Such recognition provides the association with additional rights to those enjoyed by individual leaseholders. Because this is a collective right, the relevant guidance suggests that a specific proportion of qualifying tenants should support the application before recognition of the tenants’ association can be sought, which means that leaseholders have to contact other leaseholders to get the necessary proportion However, it is apparent that leaseholders are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the numbers needed to seek recognition, particularly where they require contact information about absent leaseholders. This will not surprise my noble friends, given the well-documented increase in absent leaseholders and the growth of subletting. Putting a note through a letterbox, for example, is not a satisfactory way of achieving contact because there are no guarantees that the subtenant will pass the note on to the landlord. There is also no obligation on the landlord to pass on information. This means that a number of qualifying tenants are not given the opportunity to take part in the formation of an association, which is frustrating and potentially weakens the ability of leaseholders to exercise their statutory right This amendment to legislation which I fear I put on the statute book myself some 30 years ago—I clearly omitted to make it absolutely perfect—would address the problems outlined by requiring a landlord to supply relevant information with individual leaseholders’ consent within a given timeframe, thus helping those tenants seeking to exert their collective rights. I beg to move my first amendment.