My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for her Amendments 23 and 24 on development value. I also thank her very much for meeting me on this subject.
The amendments would introduce a scheme where enfranchising leaseholders would not pay development value if they guaranteed that they would not develop for a period of 10 years. Under the current law, lease- holders are sometimes required to pay development value when collectively enfranchising a block of flats. This is the value of the potential future development of the property, such as through adding another storey to the building, as we have heard. We recognise that development value can make the cost of enfranchisement prohibitively high.
We are committed to bringing forward a workable scheme and are exploring this area further. It is, as we have found, however, an area fraught with loopholes and technical detail. To be honest, it will take us time to get this right.
Before I finish, I want to bring up permitted development, because all noble Lords have brought this up. As noble Lords probably know, the Government have recently consulted on making changes to various permitted development rights. The consultation ran for eight weeks from 13 February to 9 April. We are considering the responses and I am sure we will have a debate on those in this House in due course.
The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, is right about this issue. We know about it and we support her, but it is difficult. I would like to meet her again, and anybody else who would like to come, to go through her amendments in detail and take things forward in that way.