To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of introducing a legal right for (a) tenants and (b) residents to trigger an audit of service charges where Bills are disputed.

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of establishing an independent body to regulate service charges for residents of all tenures.

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to support shared owners affected by (a) building remediation works and (b) increasing service charges.

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 on recent trends in the cost of service charges for leaseholders.

The level of service charge that leaseholders pay depends on many factors, including the terms of a lease and the age and condition of a building.

By law, variable service charges must be reasonable. Should leaseholders wish to contest the reasonableness of their service charges they may make an application to the appropriate tribunal.

The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 includes measures designed to drive up the transparency of service charges to make them more easily challengeable if leaseholders consider them to be unreasonable. We will set out details in due course about the extensive programme of secondary legislation need to bring the various provisions of the Act into force.

Leaseholders in shared ownership properties whose leases qualify for protections set out in the Building Safety Act are protected from the costs of internal building safety defects, with a cost cap proportionate to their equity stake in the property.

All leaseholders can benefit from the Government’s Cladding Safety Scheme or Developer Scheme for the removal of unsafe cladding. The Government understands the difficulties some leaseholders are still experiencing and has committed to review how to better protect leaseholders from costs and to accelerate the pace of remediation.