My comments were not about right to manage. That was a good segue into another short speech by the noble Lord.
However, we are conscious that expanding right to manage to leaseholders under local authority landlords was never considered by the Law Commission, nor put out to public consultation. We are unsure whether the Government have done policy work in this area. It is a whole other ball game and will be challenging. But, in principle, given that many local authorities have been guilty of significant and tragic failures of service, to put it mildly, this should be a right of local authority tenants too. But it will be complex, for many of the reasons that were well outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor.
It is also worth reminding ourselves that local authority leaseholders have, since 1994, been able to take over management through tenant management organisations. I do not believe any work has been done regarding their success or otherwise. But such a review could ignite and inform this topic on another occasion. We welcome the probe by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and also the subtleties of his alternative proposals, and will certainly attend the said—and very popular —meeting.
Finally, I come to Amendments 65A and 65B, in the name of Lord Bailey of Paddington. The aim of Amendment 65A is a good one: to ensure that leaseholders in mixed-use buildings can avail themselves of the right to manage. At the House of Commons Public Bill Committee in January, MPs heard that many leaseholders in mixed-use buildings would still be unable to benefit from the reforms in the Bill to take over management—because, as the noble Lord said, of the existence of, say, a shared plant room or car park, under rules regarding structural dependency and self-containment. The existence of a plant room or other infrastructure is something decided by the original developer and leaseholders have no control over these factors, so it feels unfair to exclude them from right to manage based on the way a block has been designed, especially if they qualify under the new 50% non-residential premises limit.
Amendment 65B would put rocket boosters under the right to manage, opening it up to far more leaseholders. We on these Benches support the amendment and the intent behind it. Members in the other place have raised concerns that the 50% trigger is too high. The 50% participation limit on right to manage was also flagged as an issue by leaseholder campaigners at the Commons Public Bill Committee in January.
There may be concerns about 50% being less than a majority, but, as the noble Lord said, many leaseholders will never be able to obtain 50% support because of the high levels of buy to let in their block. But ultimately the Committee was persuaded of the case to bring
down the 50% threshold. It is not right that just one person—the freeholder or landlord—has such control over leaseholders and can impact almost at will on their finances. As the noble Lord’s amendment suggests, 35% of leaseholders triggering a right to manage, with a right to participate for remaining leaseholders who did not originally get involved, is a far better situation than rule by one freeholder, whose interests, as the Law Commission concluded, are diametrically opposed to that of the leaseholder. Leaseholder self-rule with right to manage and a 35% participation threshold is a much more democratic state of affairs. Let us be honest: many councillors and MPs are elected to govern on much less than 50% of the vote—in fact, usually around 35%.