Category: The Buzz

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After 8 years of campaigning we are in it – with a promise to “end the injustice of private estate management”.

As many of you know, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 was rushed through at the end of the last session under the Conservative regime. Much work is still to be done on the detail, but there are parts which are in force straight away – of special interest to “fleeceholders” with a rent charge is the removal of the section 121 remedies for non payment of the estate rent charge. Now it can only be chased as a debt in the county court.

It does appear that the detailed statutory instruments for the right to challenge estate charges and appoint a new manager are not in place yet. Nor are the detailed regulations for managing agents as far as we can see.

The good news in the king’s speech is that not only will the new government finalise this Act, but it plans to go much further, implementing the Law Commission recommendations on Leasehold and laying the groundwork for much more commonhold tenure in future.

For “fleecehold” they have pledged to get rid of the “injustices” but don’t say how! Expect more consultations on that one. We will continue to lobby for universal adoption of public spaces on estates, new or old. There is no place for private management or ownership of these spaces.

Working together as a network has been successful in getting the issue to this stage and our ambition is to build on this to get the model scrapped altogether.

The general election campaign is well underway and HorNets are still working away contacting their local candidates with many positive responses. The issue of private estate charges has always been considered cross party, and so far we have the Labour Party Manifesto promising “We will act to bring the injustice of ‘fleecehold’ private housing estates and unfair maintenance costs to an end.” and George Galloway has made personal contact with the residents of Rochdale via our co-ordinator who is a constituent. This has resulted in his backing of our campaign for the ending of “fleecehold”.

We encourage all of our supporters to press their candidates of any party or none to pledge support for the ending of privately managed public spaces on estates in favour of universal adoption.

Keep it up HorNets – great work so far!

Don’t forget you can use our policy briefing to inform your discussion with the candidates.

No response to CMA recommendations for more adoption….

At the end of March we wrote to Lee Rowley, housing minister thus

After parliament was prorogued for the snap election, we received the reply below. It tells us nothing and is written by a civil servant. We have noticed over the years of campaigning this trend of delegating correspondence, so that lobbying groups who don’t have financial clout are not engaged with and are fobbed off with letters like this. Yet another example of government serving “the money” rather than the populace.

In our letter we asked about the government’s response to the CMA recommendation for more adoption. There is no answer here, but then the government did not respond to the CMA as they should do within 90 days of the recommendation. Like everything else, if the going gets tough, shut up shop and start again. It is little wonder there is no progress in issues that really matter to people.

What now? Lobby parliamentary candidates – we have just published a policy briefing which you can share with candidates when they are canvassing for your vote!! Hope it helps!! Policy Briefing