Contribution
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. He is an incredibly hard-working and effective advocate for the interests of his constituency, and he has long championed action to address unadopted amenities on privately managed housing estates. I warmly commend him for his ongoing efforts to secure a fair deal for homeowners living on freehold estates in his constituency and across the rest of England. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Carlisle (Ms Minns) and for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore), and the hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed), for their interventions in the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) for sharing the experiences, which are clearly unacceptable, of residents on developments in her constituency.
Whether it be roads, street lighting, or sewers and drains, homeowners rightly expect that public amenities on new housing estates should be built to an acceptable standard that enables them, in due course, to be adopted by the local authority or other relevant body. Yet, for far too many homeowners, the experience of living on a newly developed housing estate has been tainted by the hidden and enduring consequences of unadopted infrastructure.
Unadopted roads and private estate amenities are not, in and of themselves, new, as my hon. Friend mentioned. What has changed is their prevalence and the impact of private estate management arrangements on homeowners. Roads, sewers, drains, green spaces and other amenities that historically would have been maintained by the local authority or utility companies are instead now routinely left to be managed by private estate management companies, often with little transparency or accountability. In many cases, the quality of the amenities on such freehold estates is inferior to those adopted by the relevant public authority, and falls far short of what people have a right to expect. Residential freeholders across the country frequently report open spaces not fit for purpose, roads left unsurfaced and drainage systems that are often little more than open ditches. These issues blight people’s lives and, with few of the rights to redress found in other markets and no ability to control the management of the estates on which they live, residents feel that they are being treated as second-class homeowners.
The Competition and Markets Authority, which has been mentioned, published a house building market study in 2024 that identified significant consumer detriment arising from the private management of unadopted public amenities on housing estates, and concluded that without Government intervention, this consumer detriment was likely to increase. This Government believe that homeowners living on freehold estates deserve a fair deal. That is why we pledged in our manifesto to act to bring the injustice of fleecehold private housing estates and unfair maintenance costs to an end. Our objective is clear: we are determined to reduce the prevalence of private estate management arrangements, which are the root cause of the problems experienced by many residential freeholders, and we also want to provide those who currently live on privately managed estates with greater rights and protections, so that the fees they pay are fair, transparent and robustly justified.
As my hon. Friend is fully aware, the Government are taking action to deliver on their manifesto commitments in this area. He rightly referenced the two comprehensive consultations that we launched on 18 December last year, both of which closed on 12 March. I do not intend to summarise the contents of those two quite lengthy consultations—I know that hon. Members have been engaging with them—but in simple terms, they sought views on how best to implement the new consumer protections for homeowners on freehold estates contained in the last Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, and on the ways in which we might reduce the prevalence of privately managed estates over the coming years. We are currently analysing the many responses received, with a view to setting out next steps in due course.
I am clear that our approach must be balanced. Homeowners must be protected. They should know before they buy whether the public amenities they will rely on will be adopted, and what that means for service standards and costs. Local authorities operating under significant pressures must have confidence that adoption is safe and sustainable and provides value for money. In turn, highways authorities and drainage bodies must know that any infrastructure and amenities offered for adoption meet proper standards and are durable.