Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I am particularly grateful to the Minister for putting on record the situation with local authorities and major repair bills. I endorse her view that local authorities should use their powers to the full, because quite a lot of lessees who are faced with major works bills bought their homes in the first flush of the right to buy, and they are now pensioners. They may be just above the housing benefit limit, but they are very pressed to pay and are very frightened by those bills. The main point of my amendment relates to collective services in a block where there may be three or four different forms of tenure on any floor. Exactly the same issue arises when the lift does not work, for example. In those circumstances, it is not sensible to have different forms of regulation and different levels of payment according to the different types of tenure. It is possible to collect any payment differently—through service charges for lessees and through rent, spread over time, for tenants—but, in essence, fairness and quality of service apply to all of them equally. Some services, such as district heating, literally apply to them equally, because they all have the same charge and the same bill. I appreciate what the Minister said about this being complex. I also appreciate, as I said at the beginning, that these amendments are probably not the appropriate ones to accept, but if we are to have a coherent approach to housing, particularly on some of our largest estates, ultimately the regulator should be able to cover these areas. These services are clearly different. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, says, we are dealing with a much narrower range of services in relation to indirect tenants. However, unless we have a coherent approach and a coherent set of regulations, the piecemeal help, which the Minister has rightly spelt out, is not very evident to the residents and could lead to new inequity and unfairness between different forms of tenure. I therefore hope that this issue is kept alive. I should have declared an interest as chair of the National Consumer Council, which represents the interests of all consumers—all occupiers—in this respect. They all have a right to expect good quality collective services for which they are appropriately and not unfairly charged. That seems to be a communal issue that is not covered by the legislation or by the scope of the regulator. I suggest that we should extend it to them further down the line. As I said, I hope that this remains a live issue, but in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 80 [English bodies]: