Speeches by Pennycook.

“The 2024 Act passed by the previous Government was unambitious, in our view, but had a number of limited rights and protections that will benefit leaseholders, one of which is this new enfranchisement process. It will make it cheaper and easier overall to extend your lease or to buy out your freehold. We need to do two…”

“If the Committee has any specific questions about the commonhold legal framework or the commonhold conversion process, I am more than happy to answer them, but it is designed to allow complex, mixed-use buildings to convert in a way that does not rely, as presently is the case, on unanimity across all homeowners in tho…”

“We have published a draft Bill for enhanced scrutiny because we want the Committee—you have a really crucial role here, in terms of the evidence you can bring, but also your own expertise—to help us find any gremlins, although I hope there are none, that are in that draft Bill, and to make sure we fix them before we ge…”

“The policy is designed to account for mixed developments. I again come back to the wider point and a lesson that I learned in opposition with the 2024 Act. This is an incredibly technical and complex policy area. We saw with the 2024 Act that if you do it in a rushed way, you can make mistakes. We cannot switch on the …”

“I am not sure there is a tension but there is a challenge. If we rush in and make changes too fast or that are not well thought through, there would be an impact on housing supply. That is specifically why went out to consultation, alongside publication of the draft Bill, so that we can look at a series of niche questi…”

“I will bring Mel as well, but essentially we are still in the process of analysing a considerable amount of useful feedback. We intend to set out a road map—a plan—for how we will take forward those reforms. We do intend to press ahead with reforms to the process. We think that that will lead to very many benefits for …”

“Broadly, yes. Ground rents are a niche investment. We judge the risk of wider contagion to be low. We will provide further detail but, again, it comes back to what our objective is. It is to deliver on specific commitments made in our manifesto, in the context of those wider reforms, to deal with well-known harms takin…”

“You will have lots of opportunities to scrutinise: a policy paper that set out the rationale was published on the day, we will provide the response to the 2023 consultation that the previous Government carried out and there will be an impact assessment. The Committee will be able to draw on a range of products for its …”

“To clarify, as Minister Rigby said, we took into account investor concerns when developing the policy. We think it strikes a fair balance between the interests of leaseholders, freeholders and those invested in ground rents. Just to be very clear, as I think I was in my statement to the House on the day that we publish…”

“Indeed, but as I have said to the Committee before, I could have picked a very unambitious target and hit it easily.”

“If I could help, Ms Yang, we will publish—as I think the Committee knows; I will be responding to your letter in the coming days—a full impact assessment associated with the draft Bill for the Committee to scrutinise as part of its PLS work.”

“I take the point. We need to flesh out more detail, and I encourage the Committee to make suggestions if it has them, but we have broadly indicated the direction of travel through the social and affordable homes programme. We are thinking very carefully about what more can be done to improve the staircasing process and…”

“Broadly, I would encourage all providers to look at the changes we are introducing to the shared ownership model through the social and affordable homes programme and roll them out as far as they possibly can. On staircasing specifically, we recognise that it can be complex and costly; it involves valuations and other …”

“No? I would have to have clarity on which exact product we are talking about.”

“At the risk of misleading the Committee, if the Committee wants to write to me about a particular product, I am happy to give the Government’s position on it, but what the social and affordable homes programme will support, both in terms of sub-market rent and low-cost home ownership, is all set out in the prospectuses…”

“Rent to buy?”

“The affordability pressures that shared owners face are, broadly, high staircasing and resale fees, which we are trying to get at through improvements to the social and affordable homes programme, and then high and rising service charges. As you know, through a separate stream of activity—through bringing into force th…”

“This product, which we have said should have an ongoing role through the social and affordable homes programme, allows people to buy a share of their property of between 10% and 75%. We are trying to bring certainty to the subsidised rent portion of it, through the improvements we are making, bringing on new leases fro…”

“I understand; there is a difference, yes. We remain at present supportive of it as an industry initiative. We have not formally endorsed the code.”

“We are supportive of the code as an industry-led initiative, and I recently met the council and Ann Santry to discuss it. As a Government, we are also making changes through the new social and affordable homes programme to improve the consumer experience of shared ownership; to strengthen expectations on landlords, inc…”