Speeches by Yang.

“You do.”

“You do have embedded management agreements?”

“In advance of that change, if residents in those managed estates were to agree now, before the new legislation is brought forward, to leave FirstPort or for the local authority to adopt their estates, would you be willing to accept that?”

“You are receiving far fewer management fees. In the last two financial years, your turnover has reduced by something like 30 times. Does that reflect the number of people who are leaving your services because they now have right to manage or because freeholders and developers have decided to quit FirstPort?”

“Your investment does not explain your loss in revenue.”

“I am not sure we are going to make progress on this point.”

“That was not the question. The question was, can you explain your massive operating losses for the last few financial years?”

“We will look into Will Stone’s suggestion about “the regulation of” rather than “the service charges of” and also the substantive wording. Great; thank you.”

“I am not familiar with the wording for substantive debates. I don’t know whether anyone—”

“I feel like I am not going to get an answer to the question about the collapse in turnover.”

“The experience that many of our residents come to us with is that they ask their local managers on their estates for transparency over invoices and service charges, and they are met, time and time again, with professed ignorance. It is very difficult for us, as representatives, to see whether the people they are speaki…”

“Sure.”

“Many of my residents in new build estates, including freeholders and leaseholders alike, say that they have had informal residents’ association conversations about trying to leave their current property manager, but they cannot because they have embedded management arrangements in their property deeds that essentially …”

“Is it a substantive debate, rather than a general debate, that you are proposing? Is that what you are saying?”

“I assumed you do. Where do you make profit other than from your management fees?”

“Yes, I am very happy to broaden it to regulation of the sector or of the company. Coming off the back of the previous debate on service charges, I thought it would be beneficial to look at the issue from the business perspective and to talk about a specific business and its functioning, as opposed to service charges in…”

“Thank you, Chair. FirstPort is the largest property managing agent in the UK, as I am sure you know. The debate would follow a series of informal sessions that different party groupings have had with FirstPort over the last year. Labour MPs, Lib Dem MPs and Conservative MPs have separately had scrutiny sessions with th…”

“But you do not know the margins on the profit that you make; is that what you are saying?”

“Is it the same case for you, Mr King?”

“I have your accounts for the last financial years that you have reported your accounts. Mr King, FirstPort has a loss in its last two financial years for which there are accounts of £22 million and £25 million respectively. Could you explain this loss? Is this from a loss of clients, such as freeholders and leaseholder…”