Ruth Cadbury MP: speeches

Speeches

• 25 Jun 2025 · Department for Transport · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member asks a good question and the answer is that it is a mixture. It is the philosophy of devolution that is important because mayoral combined authorities in particular can deliver in ways that will be different according to their specific priorities and needs. There has been a potential challenge to the Department in achieving national priorities. It is also worth noting that the main estimate for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government provides additional funding for the West Midlands and Great Manchester combined authorities, so there are other pots of money from other Departments that mayors can pool together to put to best use for their authorities. Will the Minister set out what happens if a devolved institution diverges from departmental priorities, for example by opting not to fund active travel despite the Department’s objective to increase active travel? The future introduction of place-based business cases, as set out in the spending review, has the potential to transform how Government think about the value and benefit of transport interventions and outcomes. When business cases are reformed along those lines, we look forward to seeing a difference in how the Government draw and think about those connections.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  I welcome the significant transport investment that the Chancellor has announced in the north and in the city regions. That is helped through her changes to the Green Book, but when will the place-based business cases be reviewed so that those areas can start planning for the local transport initiatives that they have waited so long for?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  A lack of transparency is a theme that comes up again and again, particularly for the people who are effectively the victims. I will press on because I want to get to the end of my speech if I can. The complex state of leasehold means that many different parties have realised that they can fatten the goose with ease, and often without scrutiny and enforcement as the hon. Member has said. First, that was often done through ground rent. Properties would often charge a ground rent of between £250 and £1,000 a year in London. I would call it money for old rope, but that would insult old rope. That tactic was later replaced as more buyers and solicitors became aware of it, particularly around the sale of flats, so we then saw service charges being used as the new cash cow. A typical building in my constituency, which is often a flat built since 2000, has a service charge of £6,000, but some have charges as high as £7,000 or £8,000 without anything like that value of service being delivered. For too long, it has been possible to raise service charges without limit—often vastly above inflation and with no clear breakdown. Leaseholders will buy a property and think that the service charge is paying for services such as—to take examples from my constituency—the post room, receptionist, home cinema, car park and security. In fact, they find that the post room and the home cinema are closed, the receptionist is not full time, the car park gets flooded and the security is non-existent. If a person bought such a product on the open market, trading standards would have a field day—but leasehold is not a fair market. If we invented this market system now with its wide cast of cowboys and profit strippers, it would appear like something out of a Victorian novel. Ted Heath called it the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, but that is how we have got here. I will not regale the House with the efforts to tame and reform leasehold over the past decade. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I know that many hon. Members have been working on it. The previous Government’s changes were welcome, and MPs from both sides of the House have stood up, spoken and acted, particularly thanks to the support of the APPG and the work of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the National Leasehold Campaign. I know that the Minister gets this issue and knows it inside out too. I want to talk about my constituents’ experiences. For many people in west London, the high cost of property means that buying a house is out of reach, but people on good salaries can, just about, afford a flat for upwards of £500,000.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered leasehold reform. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. This is a well-subscribed debate, but as it is only half an hour I have said that just a couple of hon. Members can intervene, and hon. Members understand that we are not accepting any speeches apart from mine and the Minister’s. It is a pleasure to lead this debate on leasehold reform in England and Wales, one of many that I have already spoken in during this Parliament. I want to start by thanking the dozens of constituents who have written to me in the last week to let me know about the problems they have faced: high service charges, rising building insurance, safety problems, unclear management contracts and a wall of silence from their management companies and freeholders. Most of those issues have been raised with me by leaseholders in my constituency since I was first elected to this place 10 years ago. The common theme, as hon. Members know, is a lack of control. Many leaseholders assume, when they sign their contracts, that they are moving into a home. They have to pay a service charge, but they expect that to mean that communal problems will be fixed and they will be able to get on with their lives. Sadly, that is not the case. Many leaseholders are trapped in a complex, legalistic maze. I want to cover three things today: the situation for my constituents, how we got here, and how the Government are working to fix it.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I agree with the right hon. Member. There are so many issues that the Government have been looking at, and are going to have to look at, particularly to ensure against unintended consequences. With prices of upwards of half a million, even with the help of the bank of mum and dad, many of my constituents have no choice but to buy a leasehold flat, even when they have a good income and perhaps help with the deposit. That means that a whole generation in London risks getting trapped as leaseholders. The key problem is that at first the terms can seem straightforward. A person pays their mortgage and then they pay their service charge and ground rent, and for the first year, it might be okay. They might notice some problems in the communal area, but the real kicker comes when they get the first increase in their service charge. I have seen constituents whose service charge has increased by 50% or even 100%.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am sure that the Minister is noting these points and will address how we can ensure transparency and a minimum quality of standards in the billing of service charges and the other activities of management companies. I now want to get to the end of my speech. Given the popularity—sadly—of this debate, I hope that there will be many more debates on it in this place where everybody will be able to make a strong speech about these issues that are so important to many of our constituents. I will give some examples from constituents. In one case, a constituent was rightly concerned about the costs they faced and asked for a breakdown of them, but was refused. They issued the necessary legal action to get the breakdown, but six months later they are still waiting for it. There is also the specific problem that many constituents are frankly outgunned when they get into legal disputes. Another constituent faces a legal bill in the thousands because they have to represent themselves. One Hounslow resident who lives in a badly converted office block summarises the issue well: “Our building’s service charges and insurance costs average just over £2,000 per flat annually”— which sounds all right— “yet the quality of service is alarmingly poor. We have regular incidents of theft, with leaseholders having to rely on personal security measures”. They say that is because the management company are not interested. They continue: “The service charges increase each year with little transparency, covering inflated management fees, audit fees, and security charges, with no consultation with leaseholders on providers or costs. This imbalance of control leaves us vulnerable to arbitrary charges without accountability.” On top of ever-rising service charges, many people have also faced sky-high building insurance costs since the Grenfell tragedy. In one case, council leaseholders saw an increase in their costs of more than 500%. People who get the right to manage by setting up resident management organisations have the right to hire and fire managing agents, and to get rid of companies such as FirstPort, but that has not always been plain sailing. I hope that the Minister will address the issue of minimum standards for managing agents when he responds to this debate. When my constituents try to sell their flats, they often find out the major problems with leasehold: either the asking price has decreased due to the ground rent or service charges or—even worse—banks will not lend on their flats. When one of my constituents inherited a property, they found out that there was only 40 years left on the lease. They can extend the lease, but they have been told that doing so would cost a six-figure sum. They told me that “the only future I can see is that of a bleak one.” Another constituent wrote to tell me how, despite paying a record-high service charge, their lift is constantly broken down. At one point, excrement fell from a broken pipe through the lift shaft for a rather long time. I will leave Members to picture that scene. Another problem was raised by the resident of the converted office block who I quoted earlier. They said that “we have faced significant distress from ongoing attempts by our building’s freeholder to add two additional floors to our development. While Hounslow Council initially rejected the application due to objections raised by the leaseholders,” the decision was overturned on appeal. That was on the basis that the project was “aligning with wider housing targets, but disregarding the wellbeing and concerns of existing leaseholders. This decision now leaves us anticipating extensive disruption, with no realistic recourse or meaningful consultation. Put a little more colloquially, imagine if some UK millionaire had the right to build two additional storeys above your home!” Many local residents are trapped and unable to sell their homes because of the web that leasehold has left them in. I hope the Minister can address that, as I know that the Government are working on it. Whether it is capping ground rent, reforming service charges or making lease extensions easier and cheaper, we need to fix the blockage for those trying to sell. There are also problems for those who bought via Help to Buy. I have heard that the single provider that runs the service is still very slow in responding about valuations and about the other hoops that those who used Help to Buy have to go through when selling their property. Finally, I will move on to the Government reforms. I am proud that it is a Labour Government who have promised to end leasehold. However, I know that it cannot be done overnight. How is the Minister’s Department ensuring that fire safety reforms and leasehold issues go hand in hand? Constituents tell me that fire safety remediation work at developers’ cost via the developers’ building safety pledge is being done only to the mortgage lenders’ B1 standard, rather than the A standards delivered when using the Government’s building safety fund. The former not only pay high higher insurance charges but, if selling, do so at a massive discount, thus creating one of the two-tier splits in leasehold housing. That touches on another two-tier system that many leaseholders are worried about. The Government rightly plan to end new leasehold ownership, but what will happen to the 5 million existing leaseholders when that change happens? Will they get any retrospective benefit? In London, the gap between house and flat prices is already increasing rapidly, and I fear that we risk leaving many of my constituents with an asset that they cannot sell. The Government rightly have an ambitious housing target, and I want us to build more affordable homes. I am, however, worried that in London we will see more homes being built that are purely shared ownership, where the tenant-leaseholder part rents and part owns the flat but is liable for 100% of the costs. I am extremely sceptical of that business model as I have seen example after example where shared ownership looks attractive, but the service charge rockets, the rents surge and, when people try to staircase up or even sell, they face many problems. Shared ownership has a role, although I suggest that the name is a tad misleading. Can the Minister outline how the Government will ensure that the new homes being built do not simply create a new generation of trapped leaseholders? In conclusion, our leasehold system is an antique relic. It has left 5 million people trapped and now they are unsure of their future.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again and again, bills for service charges come in that are not properly itemised. There are items that do not actually exist, such as landscaping maintenance, and there is a refusal to open up. Some leaseholders are even getting charged by solicitors for what should be a right.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member, because I was going to come on to that and to the insidious links between those selling the flats, particularly the developers, and the solicitors who they recommend to the buyers—often first-time buyers who are unaware of the challenges. On how we got here, the answer, to be blunt, is greed. Hedge funds, investors, solicitors and developers—many based overseas—started meeting up at conferences about 15 or so years ago to learn how to use the weaknesses in English freehold law to fatten the golden goose. Members can see my rant on this subject on the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership website. Leasehold blocks of flats, often in urban areas, were valuable properties that guaranteed an extremely high return. In one current case a freeholder called Oakdene, which is refusing to pay to fix fire safety faults, sent me a letter from a solicitor at a rather high-priced legal firm—the letter alone probably cost hundreds.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  My constituency neighbour makes a good point, but she must remember that due to 15 years of austerity, many of those sales were the only way that public sector institutions could deliver the new services that were so badly needed. The Mayor of London and councils such as Hounslow are working with the Labour Government on several key transport links, including the west London orbital, which will unlock thousands of new homes. However, the Bill alone will not unlock the housing and infrastructure projects that the country so urgently needs, so I ask the Secretary of State—or the Minister for Housing and Planning, who is still present—to address the other causes of delay and uncertainty that we are seeing in the system. The community infrastructure levy and section 106 agreements on, say, new bus routes, must be adequate, timely and sustainable, so that people are not moving into estates to then become dependent on having a car. Providing two buses a day for a couple of years, some time after tens or even hundreds of homes have been occupied, is not building in sustainable transport. My second point is about new joint public-private developments. The hybrid Bill process, as was used for High Speed 2, took years and still did not deliver detailed plans for the routes. It then got mired in lengthy legal processes over the details. The chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission told our Transport Committee how France and Spain delivered new high-speed rail in a fraction of the time, without it being mired in public opposition and legal challenges. It has taken far too long to deliver even half of the original HS2 project. I therefore hope that the Government will come up with a more streamlined process for such major national projects. Thirdly, I hope that the Secretary of State will work with the Chancellor on different public-private funding mechanisms that other equivalent economies have long used to develop transport infrastructure, social and affordable housing and other public services, so that they are no longer held back due to historic Treasury orthodoxies on capital expenditure. Fourthly, the Housing Minister will be aware of the additional delays faced by developers of tall blocks of flats. They have planning permission but are being delayed in gateways 2 and 3 of the Building Safety Act 2022. The legislation itself may not be the problem, but the building safety regulator processes certainly are. A development of more than 400 homes in my constituency has been stuck for over a year, with no certainty about if and when they will go ahead. Obviously, my last three points are not within the scope of the Bill, but they are relevant to the aspirations of this Labour Government to get Britain building, which the Bill will deliver.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Bill. When I studied for my planning diploma, I learned that since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the power of national strategic policy versus the challenge of local politics in planning approvals has waxed and waned. It felt under the previous Government as though national powers over significant development decisions almost disappeared, and MPs of the Government party effectively pressured the then Secretary of State to refuse much-needed infrastructure developments that included new housing developments, prisons and more. There has to be a balance. The national Government have to be able to deliver on their national strategies. This is what the Bill does. I particularly welcome specific parts of the Bill. It fosters more certainty for critical national infrastructure such as electricity—that is so important, as we heard earlier in the Heathrow statement—clean energy, roads, public transport, water and sewerage. I welcome the certainty of decision making for planning applications, more effective land assembly through improving the compulsory purchase orders process and bringing back development corporations, and the return of effective spatial development strategies. The Bill will enable the Government to reform the planning system to deliver on growth, new housing, cutting carbon emissions and climate change resilience—all of which the UK badly needs. As an MP in London where buying a home or even renting is out of reach to most young people, I welcome the Government’s focus on delivering the 1.5 million new homes that are needed. The Bill and the excellent national planning policy framework enable new housing developments to no longer be designed with entrenched car dependence. The Bill is an excellent opportunity to ensure that new housing and other developments can be concentrated in locations with good public transport, so that schools, shops, health centres, parks and open spaces are easily reachable without the need to drive. This ensures access for all, not only those who have a car. It ensures access to jobs, education, training and shops—all essential building blocks for growth across the country.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Disabled People’s Access to Transport · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who chairs of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. As I said, the culture change goes from the top to the frontline, and staff need both to be trained and to have the confidence that they will be supported if they do assert the rights of disabled people.

• 26 Feb 2025 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report · Hansard source

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  I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for her response to the report on the Grenfell tragedy. Flats in a large leasehold block in my constituency were given a B2 EWS1 certificate by Adam Kiziak of Tri Fire Ltd. He and Tri Fire are now being investigated for potential malpractice by the Institution of Fire Engineers. One of my constituents, a leaseholder in that block, told me that they do not know whether their certificates are valid, or whether their problems can be remediated through the building safety fund. They do not even know whether their block still has a safety issue, and that is quite apart from the fact that those needing to move cannot sell because mortgage lenders will not lend. How and when can leaseholders such as my constituents get the assurances they need, including the assurance that no more fire inspectors will be allowed to get away with what Adam Kiziak did?

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on initiating this high-quality debate. It has been an honour to hear the many contributions that have been made. New homes must be built with the years 2030, 2040 and 2050 in mind, not the year 2000, and I am glad that the national planning policy framework has been drafted in the context of the wider climate crisis, so that planning decisions on new homes apply a presumption in favour of sustainable development. I look forward to the sunshine that the Minister will bring at the end of the debate, along with, I hope, more details about supplementing the NPPF. The domestic installation of solar panels has had a rough history in the UK since 2010. The previous Labour Government adopted zero-carbon homes regulations, but they were watered down in 2010 and largely scrapped in 2015. One million new homes have been built since 2010, most of them with minimal standards for water and energy efficiency. Sooner or later those, along with all the much older homes, will have to be retrofitted. All our constituents really care about the climate crisis. It is one of the most common topics in my mailbox; it is raised by children in schools, and by grandparents at residents’ meetings. Yesterday evening I attended a meeting of Osterley and Wyke Green residents’ association in my constituency, where we discussed solar panels. Many residents who live in conservation areas want to be able to install solar panels on their south-facing roofs where they face the road, and have asked me to see whether that is an issue of supplementary guidance or of national planning policy. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

• 17 Jan 2025 · New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I understand that 1.5 million Germans live in flats that have solar panels on their balconies. Will the Minister consider that as an option, in both new and retrofitted housing, as he looks at this important work?