Let us begin the first parliamentary sitting of the new year by wishing everyone a happy new year. As is now tradition before all our sittings, I remind all hon. Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when they are not speaking in the debate. I am also asked to remind everyone to get a lateral flow test—provided, of course, that you can get one—at least twice a week, before coming on to the parliamentary estate. These can be done at the testing centre here as well. Welcome, everyone.
That this House has considered the role of developers, housebuilders and management companies in new homes.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. Happy new year to you and to everybody else who is here this morning. This is a 90-minute debate, and I have said to quite a number of people that I could easily speak for at least 90 minutes on this topic—it will be a relief to everyone that I am not going to do that. The reason is that it is a source of huge frustration in my constituency. Owning a new home and the development of new homes should be a source of great joy, but too often it is a source of great distress. There are a few reasons for that that I want to talk about, but before I go into those, I want to say at the outset that, contrary to some of the media stereotypes about areas such as mine, most people in my constituency are not opposed to new homes. If they are homeowners themselves, they entirely understand why other people want to own a home. They often have children and grandchildren whom they are trying to help get on the housing ladder. They know that we need housing for key workers. They know that sometimes people just want to move into one of these new homes from where they already live in the constituency. But people have real frustration with the way in which these things are developing and the problems they are causing in the local area.
The first issue is simply the quality of a lot of the homes that go up, because it is often poor. Sometimes it is very good, but too often it is poor, and constituents’ homes have major defects that take years to try to deal with. I have constituents who have spent two, three or four years—sometimes more—trying to get these defects repaired. This is not like buying a cheap version of something on eBay, half-expecting that there might be something wrong with it. This is the biggest purchase that any of us will make, and we do not expect to then have years of trying to sort out the problems with it. Unfortunately, when constituents try to do that, they feel completely outmatched by the builder that built their home. Sometimes the builder will blame the contractor; sometimes they will say that there is nothing wrong: “We signed it off according to building regulations.” But I have been in some of these places and we can see these huge issues. It is completely unacceptable that people are experiencing them.
The hon. Gentleman makes a particularly important point about affordable housing. I am often told that developers who make such arguments about viability are working on a 20% profit margin per property. Does he agree that that is completely unsustainable?
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I was just about to say that when the taxpayer is subsidising the development of affordable homes and when the profits of house builders are so large—often bordering on 30%, come rain or shine; they are making these profits in all weathers—it is completely unacceptable for them to play this game so that people are unable to get on the housing ladder.
The fourth aspect that I want to talk about is the role of management companies. After someone has purchased one of these new homes, the costs do not always stop. People are often signed up to quite expensive contracts with management companies who purport to provide services to maintain communal areas, and it is often very difficult for residents to find out what is being done for that money. The charge goes up year after year, but their communal area is not maintained. They are told that staff are employed to do things, but they never see the staff. They work hard to try to get transparency about what is being provided for the money, but they cannot get it. They get a basic summary, and that is about it. The people who try to get the information are often well qualified, but they cannot get it.
I know of a management company—the residents do not want me to name them, so I will not—where many of the residents are elderly, sick or vulnerable, and they feel completely bullied and exploited by their management company. Right now they are being pressured into taking a new lease, which they do not want to take because they know it will be bad for them, but they fear the repercussions if they do not or if they go to someone to talk about it. They have talked to me, but, as I have said, they do not want to me to talk about who they are. That is an appalling situation for people to be in. Far too often there is a real problem with the way in which management companies fleece people in new homes when those people have already spent so much money.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. In preparing for it, I looked into leasehold in the United Kingdom. In England, Wales and Scotland, people are unable to buy their leasehold, but Northern Ireland is one part of the United Kingdom where they can. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when it comes to purchasing the freehold, people certainly get a “fleecehold” in England, Wales and Scotland? In Northern Ireland they have a chance to buy it out. Does he feel that that should happen here on the mainland?
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I expect the Minister will address that point when he speaks later. Most people think that they own their home, but they can often end up feeling like tenants. I experienced that myself until recently. I used to get a bill for £300 on Christmas day every year. The bill, dated 25 December, was £300 for absolutely nothing, but constituents of mine are in a much worse situation.
The fifth aspect I want to talk about is the overall broken system in which the process operates. I do not blame the Government entirely. Councils have some responsibilities: One is if they do not enforce the planning conditions when developers go above the assessed numbers that they are supposed to build. Another is if they allow the same application to be made over and over again, when they could refuse it after two tries. They do not take a bigger-picture view. There are villages in my constituency, such as Sutton Courtenay, that feel hugely overdeveloped because individual applications are all being approved and nobody is looking at what is happening to the whole area and why it might not be a good idea to keep approving those applications.
Ultimately, these companies have to be held accountable for their behaviour. They apply for sites that they know the local plan does not allow them to apply for, as is happening in Grove, in my constituency. They continually try to build on flood plains. They continually fail to adhere to their section 106 agreements and community infrastructure levy agreements—sometimes not building infrastructure at all, and sometimes building pointless things, such as a pathway that goes only halfway across an estate or a bike path that leads to nowhere, just so they can say that they have done it. All those things are going on with new developments in my constituency. I do not blame Government for it all, but it is the Government’s job to ensure that the system does not operate in that way.
There are eight colleagues wishing to speak in the debate, and I want to start the winding-up speeches just before 10.40 am. That gives us just under an hour, which is six or seven minutes per person. I will not put a formal guideline on speeches, but I ask that people comply with that time limit.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts. Happy new year to everyone who is here today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) on securing the debate, on his useful introduction and on the interesting points he made. This may be the first debate of 2022 and it may be a new year, but, as we have heard, many of the issues we are debating are not new and, aside from the leasehold scandal, have had insufficient attention from this place.
We absolutely need more places for people to live; I doubt there is a Member in this place who disagrees with that. While the Government set some general targets about how many homes should be built, the detail is rightly left, in the main, to local councils. In reality, they and the communities they represent have limited say over what sort of homes are built, where they are built and, as the hon. Member for Wantage mentioned, how the infrastructure that goes with them is delivered. That is the nub of the problem, because we are often told that the wrong type of home is being built in the wrong type of place. That can be argued ad infinitum, and it often is. The bottom line is that we are continually falling short in achieving enough decent affordable housing.
Decent housing is critical to the national infrastructure. It is the bedrock of people’s lives, yet it is too often left to the market to resolve, and the market is clearly failing. In my experience, developers all too often show contempt for local communities by riding roughshod over the development conditions imposed on them: working longer hours, making more noise, and building higher and closer than they should to existing properties. That creates more work for the beleaguered planning department and puts more demands on councils that, after a decade of austerity, simply do not have the powers and resources to keep up.
By the time the council manages to catch up with a complaint, quite often the house is already built and the drains put in. It is a massive financial, logistical and legal battle to get developers to stick to plans when they have got that far down the road. Many councils simply do not have the capacity to get into such fights, especially when the case is about a couple of metres. It might not look much on a plan, but for someone living next door, a couple of metres makes a huge difference.
I start by declaring my interest as the owner of an investment property held on a long leasehold basis. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) on securing this important debate.
I have concerns about the plight of owners of freehold homes, who often face unreasonable charges and sharp practices at the hands of developers. So-called “estate charges” for the maintenance of roads and common areas are often levied by the developer who built the estate in the first place. It is unfair that that type of homeowner cannot challenge the reasonableness of those charges, and that they have no access to dispute resolution or tribunals, meaning that they do not enjoy rights equivalent to those granted to long leaseholders under the current rules. I fear that that is allowing inappropriate practices to occur. One of my constituents has told me of his anger and unhappiness at the high level of charges to which he is subjected, with no effective means to dispute or resist them. The Government have indicated a willingness to legislate to give freehold owners some rights similar to those enjoyed by leaseholders, and I think it is time that they got on with it. I urge them to include some additional protections for freehold homeowners in the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill.
As others have done, I strongly condemn abusive practices in relation to leaseholders. I very much support the work of the Competition and Markets Authority in investigating rip-off practices such as the doubling of ground rents every few years. As I said on Second Reading of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill, there is a case for allowing the continued use of ground rents in large apartment blocks. The complete exit of professional freeholders from the market, which is the expected consequence of the abolition of ground rents, would leave leaseholders moving into such buildings with extensive financial and legal responsibilities, so as the Bill goes through, it is worth considering whether some leaseholders in some new blocks might want the option of leaving the stewardship of their block to a professional freeholder.
The right hon. Lady is speaking many words of wisdom. In my constituency of Strangford and across Northern Ireland, the council rules are a wee bit more stringent and strict. For instance, if a developer wants to develop a number of houses, they must make a financial commitment to infrastructure, including roads, and set land aside for leisure, shopping and education. That is all part of the integral planning regulations, and the requirements change as they go through each phase of the planning process. Does the right hon. Lady, whom I know has much knowledge of Northern Ireland, agree that when considering changes and how things can be done better, the Minister should look to Northern Ireland?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There are certainly aspects of the Northern Ireland planning system that we could usefully learn from, but it has its drawbacks as well. However, I feel strongly that developer contributions should be ring-fenced for the local communities that are directly affected by the new homes. Too often—certainly in England—such contributions end up being distributed to a broader area and those who bear the burden of the new development do not necessarily get the benefit of the developer contributions.
We should use home building as a core part of efforts to regenerate cities and communities in the north and midlands. Many of those areas have seen population declines over the past 50 years, but new housing and infrastructure could help to reverse that trend.
We also need to address land banking. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage proposed, we could introduce a “use it or lose it” rule for land-banked permissions. An agreed start-by date could be imposed and permission could be withdrawn if that deadline was not met, and “start-by” should mean significant initial works and not digging a few holes or a trench. We could also impose end-by dates, after which council tax is payable on every home that is planned, regardless of whether it has been built or not. There is also a case for introducing a rule to limit the number of applications that can be made in relation to the same site, which would bring to an end the exasperating practice of developers coming back again and again, with multiple applications being turned down, which effectively turns the planning process into a war of attrition with planners and local residents.
There is a strong case for a character test in planning, so that if people have a poor track record in development or there are other reasons to doubt their ability to deliver, they can be blocked at the planning stage. I believe that sites that have been illegally prepared for building—for example, where tree felling has taken place illegally—should be made ineligible for future planning applications, and I would certainly like to see the penalties increase for illegal tree felling by developers.
A happy new year to you, Mr Betts, and to all colleagues.
I start by thanking the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) for securing this debate. In my constituency, we desperately need new homes for young families to buy or rent, but I absolutely echo the comments made by colleagues this morning about the way in which the dice are stacked against homebuyers and, indeed, local authorities.
I recognise the progress over the past two or three years, with measures such as the introduction of the new homes ombudsman and the Building Safety Bill, which is going through Parliament. However, the Bill will be of limited use in my constituency, where few buildings are over 18 metres high, and where we are still waiting for cladding to be removed and replaced on some that are, as it should be. I will just take this opportunity to ask the Minister whether he can update us on assistance with the cost of replacing defective cladding on buildings that are less than 18 metres high. That is an issue in my constituency and, along with all the other problems that we have heard leaseholders are experiencing, it is a very live one.
Today I will talk about some of the issues that homebuyers in my constituency have experienced in relation to defects in their new homes, which is a problem that has been alluded to by other hon. Members. I have spoken before in the House about Aura Court in Old Trafford and the risks faced by residents from unsafe cladding, staircases and walkways, which led to the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service placing a prohibition notice on the block. Two years on, many of the issues that I raised are unresolved. Meanwhile, a few yards away at another development in East Union Street, residents await the completion of a sprinkler system and remediation of several other defects. Both those developments were undertaken by the same developer, Mr Jason Alexander, through his network of companies. I have spoken about him before in the House, too. He is notorious in the north-west for substandard developments and a failure to rectify defects once residents have moved in. Similar issues have been experienced in Renton Road in my constituency, where the developer is Mr Selcuk Pinarbasi, whom I have also spoken about before.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and to speak on this important topic, which is very close to my heart. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In Dover and Deal, as in so many other constituencies, there have been good developments and downright awful developments. That needs to change. There needs to be an end to shoddy homes and poor customer service when buying a new home.
Before I became an MP, I was asked, as an independent expert in this area, to lead the practical work of designing, developing and then implementing major new reforms to provide those better standards and improved consumer redress for new homes. Those reforms consist of a new quasi-regulator, the New Homes Quality Board, which I chair, as set out in my entry in the register. It is a wholly independent, not-for-profit body. Under its constitution, builders and warrantee providers taken together can never form a majority on it. Consumer representation on the board is provided by Citizens Advice, and by an active consumer engagement panel, which is structured into its core design.
The New Homes Quality Board holds a register of developers. There is a new homes ombudsman to provide consumer redress, free to consumers, and a new code to set out much-needed standards and principles for developers, as we have heard today. Indeed, the new code, which it took nearly five years to develop, is so extensive and far-reaching that one major developer has said that its change management programme involves in excess of 40,000 changes to its business.
A full public consultation was carried out on the code, which I hope will go some way to meeting the concerns expressed by right hon. and hon. Members, but there are appalling situations. It may not surprise my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), given his experience, to hear that in the consultation, only 4% of new home buyers said that they thought that developers met all the fundamental principles set out in the new code, so 96% of industry clearly has more to do.
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The second issue is about the impact of these homes on the environment. That has two major aspects to it. One is what it does to the local environment around the area. Naturally, people can see greenfield sites disappearing. One constituent wrote to me and said that the biodiversity commitments that a particular house builder had made had not been kept whatsoever. There is an impact on air quality and water quality, but the other aspect is how the homes themselves are built. I am continually asked by constituents, “Why are we building so many homes that we know we will have to retrofit in a few years’ time?”, and there is no easy answer to that. I am continually asked, “Why can’t every new home have solar panels? Why can’t every new home have a heat pump?” I understand why: there are various reasons why we might not put the same thing in every kind of house.
I completely welcome the Government’s commitment to having electric charging points in every new home. I really welcome the future homes standard, which will make new homes from 2025 net zero ready, with a 75% reduction in their emissions. But the point still stands that thousands of homes are going up right now and we know that because of our ambitious net zero goals, we will have to retrofit a lot of them. The reason is that it is cheaper for the house builders to build them that way today.
The third issue is affordability. I have said a few times in this place that no one who rents has ever said to me, “There are too many new homes going up.” They say only that those homes are not affordable. They say that they have saved for years and years, and it does not matter how much they save; they do not get close to being able to afford one. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. The average house price in my constituency is £335,000. To London ears that might sound fine, but it is 9.2 times median income, and that is out of reach for most people. An affordability threshold of 80% of that is still not affordable. Again, we run into bad practices. We all know that developers commit to a certain number of affordable homes, but time after time that number is driven down on the grounds that the development would not be viable if that commitment were maintained, so broken promises are a constant theme.
If I had to sum up the problems in my constituency, it would be, “Too many homes, too little infrastructure.” The two district councils that my constituency covers are, relative to their size, in the top 10 areas for house building in the country, yet they are in the bottom third for infrastructure spending. That is a huge bugbear. To put that in numerical context, an estimate of the population change between 2017 and 2027 found that the largest town and surrounding area in my constituency, Didcot, will increase from 36,000 to 51,000. The second largest area, Wantage and Grove, will increase from 17,000 to 27,000—that is in a 10-year period. Faringdon is getting thousands more people, and Wallingford is getting thousands more.
The infrastructure is not following that. It is harder to get a GP appointment, the roads in the constituency get more and more congested and it is harder to get a school place. One village has a 220-child school, and 300 houses have been built right next to it; just last year, the catchment area became less than 470 metres. People who have lived there for a long time and who expected their children to go to that school now cannot get in. When my constituents hear that planning reform may mean new houses and that they will not be able to oppose them, or that the Oxford-Cambridge arc may mean more houses, or that the council leaders’ Oxfordshire 2050 plan may lead to more houses, they are not concerned out of nimbyism; they are concerned because of their experience, over many years, of so many houses being built and so many promises being broken.
To conclude, I will talk about a few things that I think should happen. There are lots of things, and there are plenty of experts in this room who I know will talk about other aspects. First, we need a much tougher regime for the quality of new buildings. I know that the new homes ombudsman will deal with some of these issues, but it is completely unacceptable to pay that much money and have that many problems. We need very tight quality conditions, and the threshold needs to be raised. If it is not met within a certain timeframe, there should be penalties; issues must not go on for years.
Secondly, we need “use it or lose it” planning permissions. I know that there are debates about how best to do this, and I am frequently written to about the 1 million permissions that have not been built on. I know that there is a debate about land banking and whether it happens; hon. Members would be hard pressed to persuade me that it does not, at least from the developers’ point of view. We in this place are familiar with the phrase “dig a trench.” The emphasis has been on starting the building: companies dig a trench to suggest that they have started building, and the houses then take years to appear. We need these homes to be completed within a certain period. If they are not, taxes might be levied or fines paid, but I think that the permission should be lost entirely.
Thirdly, I want to talk about environmental standards. If it takes several years for these houses to be built, they should be built to the latest environmental standards, not to those that existed when the developers got permission. That is what is happening at the moment: companies are building houses to an environmental standard of several years ago, when they should be building to a standard of the future. That needs to change.
We have got to make developers and house builders commit to their affordability criteria. Our big house builders are doing completely fine for profits for their own viability, so they cannot keep saying that developments would not be viable if they committed to what they originally promised.
When it comes to management companies, we need a much stricter regime, because the current one is very murky. Companies are getting away with appalling practices, bullying residents into things and fleecing them, year after year, for things that are not being provided. We need a tougher regime under which companies cannot keep hiking charges without an extraordinary set of circumstances. The charges often go up because of things the company itself has done and got wrong, and it passes the cost on to residents who had no say in the first place. Much more transparency is needed, and penalties for such bad behaviour.
I understand that house builders want a level playing field, because an individual company does not want to commit to expensive things if its rivals are not doing so. That is where there is a role for Government in raising standards, so that all house builders have to do the same. I want more of a level playing field for smaller companies, such as Greencore Construction in my constituency. Many such companies are more environmentally friendly and more efficient, and produce higher-quality homes, but they are often outbid by the financial muscle of the big boys. Perhaps we need to reserve a greater proportion of development sites for such companies or give them greater access to capital. I am all in favour of smaller organisations rather than larger ones—I ran small charities, not larger ones. I think we can get a better product from smaller house builders, and we need to help more such companies into the market.
My final point is that infrastructure needs to go in first. It is not right to pile more and more houses and people into an area, but to do nothing to support local services and infrastructure. I have been campaigning for Grove station to be reopened, for improvements on our roads and for better medical facilities. GP surgeries are bursting at the seams because thousands more people have been added to the area—Members have heard the numbers. GP surgeries and school places have not been added along with the people. Infrastructure must go in first. Unfortunately, over decades my constituents have been told too many times that the infrastructure will come with the houses, but it never has, and now they do not believe it. That has to come first. As part of that, we might better capture the land value increase that comes with planning permission. At the moment, the increase all goes to the owner. Some of it ought to go to the local community who will live with the new houses, not to the landowner who has sold the land.
The balance of power is wrong. Management companies, house builders and developers have too much power, and local residents have too little. The Government cannot be blamed for every single thing that a private company does, but they can help to restore the balance, so that local communities do not see new houses as a curse on the area they used to love.
What about roads being brought up to an acceptable standard, so that they can be adopted by the local authority? People are waiting years for roads to be adopted. I do not blame the local authority, which sets out what needs to be done but does not have the resources or time to continually chase developers who have sold the homes and moved on. Where is the incentive for developers to come back and finish the job they started?
I want to say a few words about the massive expansion of estate management companies. It seems that the idea of the developer paying the local authority a commuted sum to cut the grass and maintain common parts has had its day. This reduces developers’ costs, although it does not seem to lead to cheaper house prices. It costs the homeowner far more in the long run because they are, in effect, paying twice for the maintenance of open spaces: once through a management fee and once through their council tax. Once again, though, it is the council that gets lumbered with all the grief and blame.
With developers looking to replace their lost funding streams, with what I hope will be the end of leasehold, I am concerned that estate management companies will become the new payment protection insurance of the house building industry. There is little regulation or transparency and, if we are honest, little need for estate management companies in most settings, so why do we have them? House builders build houses—that is their core business; they are not interested in managing estates. Indeed, they cannot wait to get rid of them to a company that specialises in such things.
Developers creating an estate management company is nothing more than a calculation on the balance sheet. They have zero interest in keeping the verges neat and tidy after they have gone. If they can make the bottom line look more attractive by getting in a management company, they will. They keep getting away with it because we let them. Why can we not start from the basic principle that the local council should be doing those jobs and that estate management companies are an unnecessary tax on homeowners? How many people are told of the implications of an estate management company or how much it costs?
What developers say to new buyers in the showroom and what is in the final contract are often very different. By the time the paperwork arrives, it is too late. People may have spent thousands on the move, never mind the psychological commitment they have made. What is said in the showroom often does not appear in any documentation. There is a classic example in my constituency where residents now look out on a 30-feet-high warehouse, which the developers conveniently forgot to mention already had planning permission when they sold buyers their homes. They are still waiting for the KFC that they were told was going to be there. Because that is just sales patter, there is no legal accountability for the lies that are told.
This is the biggest single purchase people will ever make. There needs to be far greater accountability for what developers say and what they build. At the moment, they seem to have a free pass. Developers with household names work across the country, moving from one project to the next, sometimes leaving behind problems that take years to resolve. Another development in my constituency has ended up in court, with one group of residents pitted against another and maintenance bills racking up in their thousands, because the developers did not do the paperwork or the job properly in the first place. I know that they are causing havoc elsewhere, because other hon. Members have told me. What can councils do? They have no grounds to refuse planning permission on the basis that the developer has been a poor performer elsewhere. How about a fit and proper person test for the directors of those companies?
In conclusion, I would like much greater political direction and oversight of the house building industry. After all, it will build the homes that we need, but at the moment it quite understandably organises affairs to maximise profits. Housing is a critical part of our infrastructure—having a roof over one’s head is fundamental—but it has been shown time and again that we cannot rely on the market alone to deliver that. Four and a half years on from Grenfell, we still have not really had a decision on who is liable for the defects that were created there, and there is clearly a reluctance in Government to grasp the nettle and take some ownership of the industry.
I will turn to the planning system, which others have addressed with great insight. I have put on the record many times my concerns about the proposed reforms in the “Planning for the future” White Paper. I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s indication that he is willing to think again about those plans, and I look forward to a clear public statement about his views on the White Paper. I do not believe that the way to deliver the homes we need in this country is to strip people of their right to have a say in what is built in their neighbourhood.
There is a range of factors that slow down house building in this country but that have nothing to do with the planning system, and I will set out a few ideas on how we can ensure that the right homes are built in the right quantities in the right places. As a principle, any changes we make to the planning system should increase, not undermine, local democracy. They should strengthen and simplify the local planning processes to ensure that development is led by communities, not forced on them against their will. National housing targets should be advisory, not mandatory, and developers should not be able to use them to try to force local councils to agree to inappropriate development. Housing should sit within an integrated long-term development plan for urban regeneration to prioritise the Government’s levelling-up commitments.
Lastly, we could provide tax incentives for elderly homeowners to downsize, for example by reducing stamp duty.
As the Secretary of State contemplates which reforms to take forward and which to reject, I hope that he will listen carefully to the concerns that have been expressed in this debate. We must not let our rush for new homes compromise our environmental commitments or destroy our green and pleasant land, and we must not repeat the mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s, when poor quality high-rise housing blighted the lives of millions of people.
Those homes have now been sold on to private buyers and, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), the council has therefore been advised that it needs to take enforcement action not against the developer but against those homeowners—the very parties aggrieved by failures in the system. It seems that developers can repeatedly take advantage of a planning and building control regime that creates conflicts of interest; that gives precedence to the interests of builders and warranty companies over building quality and safety; and that leaves leaseholders and often, as my hon. Friend pointed out, the local authority powerless to act.
That will continue even after the changes made by the Building Safety Bill, which does not mandate people undertaking building work to do so in accordance with plans that have been either submitted to and approved by a local authority or issued with a plans certificate by an approved inspector. The Bill provides a power to make future regulations in that regard, but we have not yet had a commitment from Ministers to bringing those forward. I urge the Minister to do so, given the widespread support for such a measure in response to the Government’s consultation. Meanwhile, if a registered building control approver appointed by the developer wrongly approves, gives a plans certificate or issues an initial notice or a final certificate, the local authority is effectively locked out of enforcement action. I recognise that the Bill creates new compliance and stop notice powers for local authorities in some circumstances, but they are hedged about with limitations.
Company law could be a useful tool in acting against unscrupulous developers and repeat offenders, but it repeatedly falls short. For example, Mr Alexander again and again sets up a new company for each development, which he then either liquidates, strips of its assets or allows to be struck off for non-compliance with registration and other requirements, leaving buyers with no body against which to pursue further action. It is pleasing to note the Bill’s inclusion of tougher provisions so that when an offence is committed by a corporate body with the connivance of a director, that director will commit the offence. However, we also need a more energetic approach to company law.
I would be grateful if the Minister supported me by using his good offices to press Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as I have been doing, for a less dilatory response from the companies registrar to enforcement action, and indeed for a toughening up of company law, which I am aware Ministers in BEIS are considering to ensure that those who breach the obligations that we rightly expect of directors cannot continue to behave in this way.
I very much echo the comments on managing agents. Residents of Eden Square in Urmston have been battling their management company, Residential Management Group, for years for essential work to be undertaken, and have faced what look like excessive costs when anything is actually done. They are not alone. The Minister may have seen the report in The Sunday Times on 5 December relating to the mismanagement and greed of that organisation. Meanwhile, Mr Jason Alexander retains control of the management company for East Union Street and is trying to regain control of the management company for Aura Court, despite his long track record of failing to act.
I support the concerns raised about the weakness of the regulatory regime in relation to developers and management agents. I very much hope that the Minister will work with colleagues in the House and in this debate on how we can continue to enhance and improve protections for homeowners.
This is such important work that I am determined to see it through to its final operational launch in the coming weeks before I step back and hand over to my successor. It is, and has always been, cross-party work—indeed, cross-governmental work by the Administrations in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It started with the vital leadership of the all-party parliamentary group for excellence in the built environment. I am delighted that the Minister is present, and is shepherding in these far-reaching reforms through the Building Safety Bill and other measures, as he was the chair of the APPG, which set out the problems and solutions for new homes, including the need for a new homes ombudsman. That was in addition to your vital work, Mr Betts, in leading the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee for many years.
On ensuring that a house is right the first time, the code specifies that a home must be complete. It prevents customers from being paid to move into an incomplete and shoddy home. It may sound absurd, but that was what was happening. People were paid to move into a house of two bathrooms and four bedrooms, say, where only one bathroom was working. Perhaps even the plumbing was not finished. The homeowner would have the job of their life trying to get things fixed after they had moved in and the builder had moved out.
It is also a requirement of the new code that the home meets all building safety, environmental and similar regulations. My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) are quite right that building green homes and warm homes is central to building good homes. I am sure that the Minister has heard about environmental standards in the context of the upcoming planning reform. I hope that he will also consider the importance of water sustainability to the wider community architecture of cities, towns and villages in reducing and preventing flooding, and promoting better, sustainable water usage.
The establishment of the new building safety regulator is essential, because some of the safety situations for new homes have been shocking—none more so than that faced by my constituents in Sholden, where fire breaks were supposed to be in place but were not. Some of my constituents are still waiting to receive safety certificates, which they need in order to sell their homes, as well as for peace of mind in their home every day.
Finally, the new code requires builders to have an effective and standardised aftercare service. There will be fixed timeframes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage recommended. The backstop to all of that is an independent new homes ombudsman service. Following a competitive, open procurement process over many months, the Dispute Service was chosen as a preferred new homes ombudsman partner. It has an impressive record across the four nations of the UK. All the arrangements will be paid for by the house building industry and access to the new homes ombudsman will be free to consumers. I hope that will begin to make a significant difference as we move forward.
I hope that, in the time available, I have given a flavour of the significant and necessary changes under way. If those changes do not go far enough, the Minister will find himself on a continuing journey with me to press for further change. Change is urgently needed, for home is where the heart is, and a person’s home is their castle.