This has been our message for some years now, regulation of agents just doesn’t hack it.
We have an opportunity to send this message to government via its Reducing the prevalence consultation which does talk about adoption going forward, but is inadequate to deal with existing estates. We will be second class residents in a two tier system if adoption is not retrospective as well. It needs to be zero prevalence!
We have studied the lengthy consultation and guidance, and come to the conclusion that it is really too long and technical for residents to complete, and in many ways does not give us the opportunity to get across our key messages.
So just as with the first consultation we recommend emailing a response to reducingprevalence@communities.gov.uk
Suggested points – please customise – the more you personalise the better :
I live on a new build/ex council/ex MOD development subject to estate maintenance charges due to lack of local authority adoption. I am a freeholder/leaseholder/shared ownership/housing association owner/tenant. My experience is that managing agents are exploiting me via this system, but that this is an effect of underlying lack of adoption and not the root cause of my unfair treatment.
[here you could insert a paragraph describing your estate and its unadopted areas. If you were a freehold purchaser were they as described when you were looking to buy?]
In my view the only route to justice is adoption of all estates with any kind of public access, amenity or benefit (such as flood risk management). This would be fair to estate residents but also to the wider community as they would get better quality infrastructure.
Government could help by making adoption the default in future via planning policy and national standards for future new builds. The conditions for retrospective adoption could be created by collective enfranchisement and support for residents and local authorities to negotiate adoption of existing estates. There will be some funding required for remediation, but I believe there is a lot of unspent 106 money which could be used.
The only exceptions would be for estates which are actually private and for the exclusive use of the residents. This group would benefit from regulation of agents and companies, with redress, together with a right to manage.
I am very worried that I will end up on a second class estate because it already has private management and is not adopted. Regulation and redress will not solve this for me. I fear incomplete action by government will devalue my home and may even make it unsaleable.
So please reduce the prevalence to zero as soon as possible.
Don’t be discouraged from filling in the government questions, but we have found them to be over technical for ordinary people to answer, they seem to be designed for industry and councils to submit. perhaps they don’t really want to hear from us. Please do an email response at least. numbers matter!
