The 2016 Act does not give a right to veto, but it gives improved powers to residents associations. Groups have had some difficulties in exercising those powers. If the hon. Lady will give me a second, I will try to explain what we seek to achieve.
Section 130 of the 2016 Act will make a big difference to residents associations, which are finding it difficult to obtain the number of members needed to help them to apply for statutory recognition and the additional rights that that brings. It will do so by requiring a landlord to supply to the secretary of a residents association information that would allow contact to be made with absent leaseholders for the purposes of increasing the association’s membership and therefore its likelihood of achieving recognition.
I turn to another important aspect of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which concerns a landlord’s recovery of litigation costs from leaseholders as administrative charges, which the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse raised. He gave a pretty horrific example from his constituency of how that is being abused in a particular case. At present, where a lease allows a landlord to recover the costs of legal proceedings through the service charge, a court or tribunal can decide to restrict the amount that can be recovered in that way. Courts or tribunals do not have similar powers where recovery of the costs of proceedings as an administration charge is permitted by the lease.