Cameron Thomas

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate. I purchased my home in 2017. By the time I surrendered a deposit of several thousand pounds, which had taken me a decade to accrue, I had already engaged with a financial adviser, secured a mortgage in principle and researched my eligibility for a Government equity loan. I had already picked the carpets by the time I was told to sign an estate management contract. The concept was completely alien to me; it was explained that on top of my council tax—paid to a local authority to maintain my public services—I would now pay a private company to maintain certain other things around the development. If I declined, I was not allowed to buy a home. It felt a lot like blackmail. It is worse than I realised at the time; the private company is entirely unregulated and it can, and does, charge me and fellow residents whatever it wants for services. Residents can, and often do, see their annual bills rise severalfold. In serving her local residents, the excellent local councillor Sarah Hands for the Innsworth ward can regularly be found mediating an abdication of responsibility between Persimmon Homes—it still has not passed the estate on to the local authority almost a decade after moving offsite—the local authority, Severn Trent Water and the estate management company. FirstPort is so notoriously difficult to even find a point of contact for that residents give up and then Sarah Hands gets it in the neck instead. I echo the requests made by the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper). The restructuring of local government gives us an opportunity to end this scam, return estates and services to the local authorities, and outlaw the practice of signing these contracts at the point of house purchase.