Royal Mail

Let’s start by being clear that this isn’t a tabloid article or blog about William or Harry. We’re talking letters and parcels.

And, to reinforce that, why not a relevant quiz question next?

Which government minister led the privatisation of the Royal Mail? Was it

1. Labour’s Peter Mandelson, or
2. Conservative Michael Fallon, or
3. Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, or
4. UKIP’s Nigel Farage?

Still thinking? Let’s make it a little easier.

We can exclude d) Nigel Farage on two grounds. First, he was never a government minister. Secondly, Nigel Farage is never the answer to a serious question.

Give in? Well, it was c) Liberal Democrat Vince Cable…although he was supported by b) Conservative Michael Fallon.

Given the under-valuation of the shares in every previous privatisation (gas, water, electricity, telecoms), when the Royal Mail was privatised in 2013, it was not surprising that applications were made to buy seven, yes 7, times more shares than were available. In fact, the shares rose 38% on the first day of trading and were 58% higher just 6 months later. At one point, they were trading at an 87% premium.

When the all-party Business (BIS) Committee investigated, it concluded, with classic understatement, “…it appears that the taxpayer has missed out on significant value”. To put it another way, we – the taxpayers – could have received an extra £1 billion for the shares if they’d been priced at the value they traded on the first day, and a lot more just a few months’ later.

You’d think Messrs Cable and Fallon would have been embarrassed? No way. They told the Committee “We don’t apologise and we don’t regret it.”

So, why am I writing today about these events of 5 years ago? Well, it’s because they paint an important backcloth for a number of recent issues about the Royal Mail, its executives and its performance.

Let’s start with executive pay. The former chief executive was extremely well-paid but, recently, the Royal Mail board appointed a new chief executive, Rico Back. He was to be welcomed with a golden hello of £6 million and then be paid up to £2.7 million per annum. And, he would remain living in Switzerland whilst commuting occasionally to London.

No wonder, when shareholders got the chance to consider this in July, in one of the biggest revolts in shareholder history, more than 70% opposed it but could not stop it going ahead. So, 34% of shareholders opposed the re-appointment of the chair of the board, Peter Long. [Incidentally, last week, the shareholders at another company, Countrywide, where Mr Long is also the chair of the board, successfully revolted against a £20 million pay package for executives. Mr Long is also board chair at a number of other companies. He doesn’t have a zero hours contract; he seems to have a series of contracts which commit him to working more days every week than there are days.]

Then, last week, the Royal Mail was fined £50 million for breaking competition law. At its simplest, it had been found guilty of unlawfully blocking competitors for parts of its commercial services.

And, this week, it has been revealed that complaints about lost mail and parcels have reached record levels, topping more than 1 million last year. More than 250,000 people lodged formal complaints about lost parcels. There was a 58% increase in reports from customers complaining that they had never received their parcels, despite the Royal Mail saying they had been delivered.

That’s bad enough, but have you noticed what has been happening to the Royal Mail’s performance in delivering our letters.

Well, on the face of it, not much. Royal Mail claims that more than 99% of first-class letters are delivered the following day and more than 98% of second class letters are delivered within three working days. OK, it’s not quite as good as 150 years ago, when you could post a letter in the morning and have it delivered to the other side of town later that day, but it seems acceptable.

But, have you noticed the changes that the Royal Mail has been making to the collection times at post-boxes across the city? Until two years ago, most post-boxes in the city had ‘last collection’ times between 15.30 and 17.30. This was both appropriate and convenient. Businesses knew that as long as letters produced during that day’s work got in to the post-box on time, 99% were expected to be delivered the following day. Most workers were familiar with that call ‘Anything else for the post?” which rang around the office around 5pm each day.

However, the Royal Mail has been changing the ‘last collection’ times to post-boxes across the city and across the country and bringing them forward to 09.00. So now, post generated and posted during the day isn’t collected until the following day. [Unless you are prepared to take the post to the minority of post-boxes which have later collection times.]

This means that, effectively, the Royal Mail has given itself two days to deliver first-class post, and four-days to deliver second-class post, and yet can still claim that it delivers more than 99% on the following day. What a fiddle!

I’m just waiting to see some honest advertising from our privatised Royal Mail: “Prices up. Executive pay up. Lost letters up. Lost parcels up. Service down.” But, I expect I’ll be waiting some time.

Whatever, it is now time for all of us to keep our wits about us. The universal service obligation – in other words, the same price and target delivery times, including a requirement for daily deliveries Monday to Friday, to apply for mail throughout the UK – is only enshrined in law until 2021.

Just watch. There will be enormous pressure and lobbying from a number of companies over the next three years to end the universal service obligation for domestic mail. The sharks are circling.

Have your say about buses

100 years’ ago today, there was a strike on the buses.¹

The strike arose out of a demand from women conductors that they should also receive the bonus of five-shillings a week that had recently been awarded to male conductors. Of course, nowadays, no-one – perhaps other than UKIP representatives and supporters who seem to think that equality is some strange form of political correctness – would contemplate discriminating so blatantly as this. However, it is clear that there is still considerable gender discrimination in pay in all employment sectors.

But, how often do you see a bus conductor of any gender nowadays? They are almost as rare as hen’s teeth. In fact, their demise correlates strongly with the demise of local public transport since Margaret Thatcher’s deregulation of the bus services some thirty years ago, since when there has been a 40%+ reduction in the number of passenger journeys in South Yorkshire. Is it any surprise that that correlates strongly with the rise in road congestion, which has added so much to journey times and business costs?

I have long argued that we need to take back local public control over transport services so that buses, trams and trains are run for the benefit of passengers – and in support of local economic, environmental and social regeneration policies – rather than for the profits of the shareholders of transport companies.

In recent weeks, there have been a large number of articles and reports in the local media - including the views of local users, operators and politicians (including myself) - about our local bus services.

Now, the all-party House of Commons Transport Committee has launched an inquiry into people’s experiences of and expectations about bus services throughout the UK. It is important that the voices of Sheffield and South Yorkshire people are heard in this consultation.

The Committee specifically wants to know:

• What are some of the factors that might be affecting bus use in our local area?
• How reliable is the bus service in our local area?
• Does congestion affect bus use in our local area? If so, what measures have bus companies taken to improve this?
• How dependent are people on bus services in our local area?

You can find out more about the inquiry and how to make your views known at

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/transport-committee/news-parliament-2017/health-of-bus-market-inquiry-launch-17-19/?utm_source=CWC-Transport-Bus+services&utm_campaign=62384b788d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_15_08_38_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3005bc3c8f-62384b788d-99886639&mc_cid=62384b788d&mc_eid=04f1d8f500

I invite everyone who is interested in trying to improve our local bus services to contribute. Do it now.

¹ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-omnibus-strike-p2zlgml5b

Warm words only, so the housing crisis continues

In the last week, the government has made, what it purported to be, three major announcements about housing policy.

Let’s not be in any doubt about the timing. There is no reason why these announcements couldn’t have been made a month ago. They have been made now, in the peak mid-August holiday period, to avoid parliamentary and professional scrutiny. And, when we see the content, we can understand why.

The first announcement was, effectively, a ‘no change’ decision about funding for supported housing.

Supported housing is mainly for the elderly, people with mental, physical and learning disabilities who require personal care, support or supervision. It includes sheltered housing, group homes, hostels, refuges, and supported living complexes. About 270,000 people live in supported homes.

In 2011, the coalition government made proposals to fundamentally change housing benefit (as it introduced universal credit). This was followed, in 2015, by a bizarre decision to force rent cuts on social landlords – with the effect of cutting the number of new social homes for rent that would be built – and, in 2016, by the imposition of local housing allowance caps.

After a consultation in late 2016, which produced nearly 600 major responses by February 2017, Theresa May announced another set of policy changes for sheltered and supported housing in October 2017. This included a proposal that funding for short-term and transitional supported housing – typically homeless hostels, refuges for those at risk of domestic violence and those receiving support for drug/alcohol abuse – would be through a ring-fenced grant administered by local authorities.

Everyone with any knowledge about this specialist housing sector said this would be an absolute disaster. In response to the fierce criticism, the government announced another consultation which ended in January this year. It has then taken another seven months for the government to announce that it has climbed down and that housing benefit will continue to fund short-term housing.

It’s a welcome announcement, if only because it was the only logical decision. But, a listening government wouldn’t have got itself in to this mess in the first place and created a year of unnecessary turmoil. As it’s a no-change announcement, there is no new money involved.

The second announcement was by Secretary of State James Brokenshire about ‘a new £100 million programme to eradicate rough sleeping within a decade’.

Only under determined questioning did Mr Brokenshire admit that there was no new money involved at all. £50m was already part of the rough sleeping budget and £50m had been taken from elsewhere in the housing budget. 

The incoming Labour government in 1997 inherited a high and rising level of rough sleeping. In 1999, Louise Casey was made Head of a national Rough Sleepers’ Unit, backed with resources which then resulted in year-on-year reductions in the number of rough sleepers. But the incoming coalition government in 2010 abandoned those policies, with the inevitable result of a near tripling of the number of people sleeping on the streets.

It’s an absolute scandal that it has taken the government so long to acknowledge the disastrous impact of its policies on individuals, families and on communities. There was no need to wait until August to do something. And the attempt to portray the announcement as an extra £100 million to tackle rough sleeping, when it is nothing of the sort, was just disgraceful.

The final announcement was the long-promised Green Paper on Social Housing.

Last September, the then Secretary of State Sajid Javid announced “a wide-ranging, top-to-bottom review of the issues facing” the social housing sector. He said it would “be the most substantial report of its kind for a generation”.

Let me tell you that it is nothing of the kind. It’s hardly worthy of the epithet Green – it’s Pale Pistachio at best. It’s full of warm words, but is most optimistically described as “tinkering at the edges.”

I will write more comprehensively about the Green Paper in due course. Suffice it to say that on the single most important issue for individuals and families throughout England – how many new affordable homes are going to be built – the Housing Minister has confirmed that, last year, just 5,900 social rented homes were built, the lowest number since records began and that, next year, just 6,000 will be built, when everyone agrees we need to be building 80,000 a year.

There are more than one million people on housing waiting lists…and the government is not committing a single extra pound towards building the new affordable homes for rent that are required.

It is not surprising that I have been unable to find a single organisation or informed commentator who has given the Green Paper a warm welcome. I leave you to choose between ‘underwhelming’ and ‘pitiful’. It simply fails to rise to the challenge and so the housing crisis continues.

When cutting regulation increases crime

If you are tempted by the siren calls of populist politicians and journalists who try to seduce you with claims that our lives would be so much better with less regulation, I suggest you stop and think.

Last December, I wrote an article¹ about legislation that had resulted in a dramatic fall in crime. After the Scrap Metal Dealers Act was passed in 2013, with tough measures to crack down on the trade in stolen metal, metal thefts dropped from nearly 62,000 in 2012/13 to fewer than 13,000 in 2016/17.

At its peak, metal theft was estimated to cost the economy more than £220 million per year. The Act has undoubtedly saved the national economy millions of pounds. Thousands of homes, businesses and churches were saved from the lead thieves.

That Act was an excellent example of how legislation can cut crime, save lives and benefit families, organisations, businesses and the national economy.

Today, I want to draw your attention to an example of what can happen when regulations are removed in the name of ‘cutting bureaucracy’.

Since the mid-1990s, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) has shown long-term reductions in most categories of theft, with the overall number of theft offences having fallen by 69% since 1995.²

But recently, there has been an increase in some types of theft, particularly in vehicle-related theft. In fact, last year, vehicle-related theft increased by 17% and “theft of vehicles” increased by a massive 40% (to 82,000). In the West Midlands, vehicle theft has tripled in the last three years.

So, what the heck is going on?

Well, in 2015, the government removed the rule that, to get a salvage car back on to the road, the vehicle needed to obtain a vehicle inspection certificate certifying that it was fit for the road. It was all part of the government’s deregulation strategy.³

The unintended, but predictable, outcome is that criminals are stealing cars to break them down for parts. Then, they are using these parts to repair salvage vehicles which have been written off by insurers following accidents.

And, of course, we are not talking about minor accidents and cheap vehicles. The criminals make big money from expensive cars that have been involved in major accidents. It’s the luxury brands which are being sold at auction as fixable write-offs rather than as write-offs to be scrapped for parts.

Having bought the write-off, the Mr Bigs are then commissioning the theft of vehicles which will provide the parts for repair. The patched vehicles are then sold as second-hand through internet or auction sites.

Because these cars are being cobbled together in back-street workshops, rather than reputable garages and repair shops, the likelihood is that unsuspecting buyers are getting unsafe cars, especially in relation to safety elements, like crumple zones and air-bags.

The deregulation, which promised a better life, has actually resulted in a massive increase in car theft - including violent car-jackings and car-key burglaries - an increase in the number of unsafe vehicles on the road, and an increase in the number of people who are buying a pig-in-a-poke.

So, we have some very clear recent examples of how additional legislation can cut crime and improve our lives and of how cutting regulation can increase crime and seriously damage our lives.

I’m very clear. I have no interest in introducing or maintaining unnecessary legislation or regulation and we should keep these under regular review.

But neither do I – and nor should you – have any time for those who blithely assert how much improved our lives would be, if only we ended regulation and bureaucracy.

And, with respect to the single most important decision in front of us at the moment – Brexit – why is it that those, who loudly proclaim that Brexit will result in less regulation, have simply been unable to produce a schedule of laws and regulations that they intend to remove, despite being charged with that task for more than two years and having had thousands of people working on their proposals?

If you’re not worried, you ought to be.

¹ Scrapping Crime, 11 December 2017, http://www.clivebetts.com

² The Crime Survey for England and Wales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2018#a-rise-in-theft-is-driven-by-vehicle-related-offences

³ This included the Red Tape Challenge and the One in Two Out rule and a Deregulation Bill with a range of measures “to reduce regulatory burdens on businesses and public authorities”. http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/RP14-28

FINANCIAL TIMES

It wasn’t that long ago that Ministers and senior civil servants were completely dismissing any suggestion that some individual local authorities were heading for the financial rocks, let alone that the whole sector was rapidly approaching a cliff edge.

I don’t think they are as complacent today. However, despite the continued insistence that they are not expecting any surprises it is clear that there is a lot of nervousness and finger crossing.

Establishment complacency has largely been fuelled by the way in which local government has managed to cope with the significant cuts in resources since 2010 assisted by the disciplines brought about by best value and comprehensive performance assessment. These cuts have been on a scale not faced by any other service nor by any government department.

Of course, the cuts have not been evenly distributed, but even the massive redistribution of resources from the poorest areas to the wealthiest has not offered sufficient protection to the latter, which are now in the front row of red-flag wavers.

Northamptonshire may be blamed as simply a case of bad management but they are not alone. Surrey, East Sussex, Birmingham, Northants, Shropshire , Somerset and Lancashire are already posting warning signs. Earlier this year the National Audit Office (NAO) said 10% of upper-tier authorities were 'vulnerable to financial failure'. A large number of district councils are now actively considering full or partial mergers as one way of cutting costs.

The ‘vast reserves’, which Eric Pickles claimed could be used to avoid any cuts, are now being used at a dramatic rate – not for the purposes for which they were intended, but to cover in-year overspends and next year’s planned expenditure. The NAO suggests that one-in-ten councils could run out of reserves within three years.

Section 151 officers up and down the country will now realise that there is nothing to be gained by keeping their concerns private or by not drafting their S114 notices. Many auditors are busily re-reading S24 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act.

But the problem is a lot bigger than just a shortage of money. We have now reached a situation where the immediate financial challenges are absolutely compounded by all the uncertainties about local government’s financial infrastructure.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) asked the government to explain by the end of September why it believes that local authorities are sustainable in the current spending round, and, with local authorities, to agree a definition of financial sustainability and a methodology for assessing risk. Will ministers agree?

The green paper on adult social care funding is delayed till the Autumn. The problem doesn’t go away by delay. It’s a classic ‘wicked issue’. It is political leadership and courage that is required..

Given individual and collective failures in children’s services over the last decade and the justified criticism of councils’ performance , it was inevitable that we would see a significant rise in the number of children in the ‘care system’ . The Children’s Commissioner has now warned ministers that the £2bn resource gap inevitably means that crisis work will be prioritised and preventative work will be cancelled.

Housing is so high up the government’s agenda – we keep being told – but the promised social housing green paper has failed to materialise.

On the income side, the government has reaffirmed its long-term commitment to 100% business rates retention but refuses to give a timetable for implementation. NNDR is under attack as the retail sector is in turmoil and Amazon reveals that it paid just £4.5m in UK corporation tax last year and relatively little on business rates on its out-of-town warehouses, compared to its High Street competitors.

Similarly, unreformed council tax, with no extension of the bands and still based on 1991 valuations is increasingly seen as unfair.

So we need nothing short of fundamental reform. A significant increase in the quantum of funding available to councils and specifically a social premium and a slice of inheritance tax to meet the growing demands of social care as recommended by the joint select committee inquiry . Reform to council tax and business rates is needed to make them fairer and more effective.

Then there’s devolution , forgotten but hopefully not abandoned. Transferring powers to councils can improve services and value for money . Let’s start with the obvious candidates skills and transport. But if we are to see councils have a tax base able to grow with service demands we also need to devolve tax raising as well as spending powers. The Treasury may not like continuing demands from the LGA for more money but it likes the idea of giving councils the ability to raise that money themselves even less.

We may get some change but will it be fundamental reform?

Not bold, just criminal

Those with long memories (or those who own the appropriate box-set) cannot fail to remember the wonderful 1980s TV series Yes Minister, a political satire which featured the daily tussles between a government minister and senior civil servants.

Most of the episodes revolved around proposals for new policies, legislation or administrative change put forward by either the minister or civil service and the determined attempts of the other to frustrate the proposals, whilst purporting to support them. Of course, it was all fictional but, occasionally, so close to the truth that laughter was tinged with alarm bells.

The reason I mention this now is because, whenever Minister Jim Hacker put forward a scheme - which could clearly only end in a policy shambles, political calamity, public anger and a massive waste of money – Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby would inevitably respond “Well that’s a very bold proposal, Minister”.

So it was when Conservative Minister Christopher Grayling – yes, that’s the same CG who the Yorkshire Post, thousands of rail users and MPs from all parties have been calling on to resign as Secretary of State for Transport, given the rail timetable shambles he oversaw this year, but then Justice Secretary - decided to press ahead with the privatisation of the probation service.

The probation service is responsible for the supervision of offenders in the community – either undertaking community service or following release from prison - and for providing reports to the criminal courts to assist judges in their sentencing judgements.

My Grayling is ideologically committed to privatisation. When senior civil servants told him his probation proposals were ‘bold’, he just told them to get on with it. When everyone concerned with the criminal justice system told him that his policies would end in failure, poor performance and waste vast sums of money, he told them they were wrong. In fact, the only people who supported Mr Grayling’s proposals were a few free-market think-tanks, ideologically committed to privatisation, and a number of companies which claimed wide expertise in the criminal justice system in the UK and overseas.

Yes, you’ve guessed. These companies included those – like G4S and Serco - who had been busy ripping off the public purse by charging millions of pounds for claiming to have fitted and be monitoring the tags of people who were dead or in prison. G4S had to repay £104m and Serco repaid £71m for over-charging. It wasn’t surprising that they supported privatisation but, given their performance, alarm bells should have been ringing loudly in Mr Grayling’s ears. But no, he pressed ahead with his ideological experiment.

It has been a complete and utter disaster.

Not only did service performance drop dramatically - we learned of offenders only being supervised over the telephone – but it also proved a financial disaster. Last year, the government was forced to spend an extra £342m to bail out the privatised ‘community rehabilitation companies’.

Earlier this year, the National Audit Office produced a scathing report about the new services. This was followed by similar scathing reports from the chief inspector of probation and the all-party justice committee.

Finally, last month, the new Conservative Justice Secretary David Gaulke announced that the eight private firms that run these ‘community rehabilitation companies’ will have their contracts terminated in 2020, two years earlier than agreed. Just to prop up this service until 2020 will cost an additional £170m.

So, Mr Grayling’s ideological venture has proved to have cost more than an additional £500m and much more money will now have to be spent in recreating a probation service from 2020.

Mr Grayling’s experiment was not bold. It was criminal.

Time for a re-think

Over centuries – and, in some countries, still today - men and women have battled to get the vote. As Churchill reminded us, when compared to the alternatives, democracy is the least worst form of governance.

Democracy requires elections. There is no one pure type of election process; all have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s perfectly reasonable to have different sorts of election process dependent upon whether the election is for a President or a Mayor, Parliament or Council, or Executive or Revising Chamber.

But, whatever the type or process, all elections have to be conducted with absolute honesty. In many countries, we rely on International Election Observation Missions to monitor and report on the integrity of elections. In the last week, in the maelstrom of contrasting views, we have had to place some reliance on observers of the elections in Zimbabwe to get an accurate picture of events.

What is little known in the UK is that international observers have long been very critical of some of the UK’s election infrastructure. Forget for a moment that we still rely on stubby pencils, attached to a piece of string, to mark our X.

The biggest criticisms are (1) the way in which the electoral register is constructed and (2) the lack of a requirement to produce ID when we arrive at the polling station to claim our voting paper.

The first arises from historic processes and an assumption that we will tell the truth about who lives in our home and is eligible to vote. Actually, the biggest disgrace about this issue is the level of under-registration, particularly in those inner-city communities with the highest mobility.

The second arises because, unlike most of the rest of the world, we do not have a single, reliable, robust method of ID. It might be argued that the then Labour Government approached the issue of ID cards in completely the wrong way but, there can be little doubt now, that the UK missed a huge opportunity to get some sense into policies and policy implementation when proposals for bio-metric ID were abandoned.

I have no time for those politicians and newspaper editors who bang on about ‘migration being uncontrolled/we don’t know who is coming in or out of our country’ or about ‘stopping unentitled people from accessing our benefits’ system or NHS’ when they have campaigned against bio-metric ID cards which are an essential element for implementing and managing such policies. It’s hypocritical to suggest otherwise.

I’m very clear that our election processes must demonstrate integrity. I’m intolerant of those who try to abuse or cheat the system, and believe that the law should come down hard on any perpetrators.

As it happens, I do think that elections in the UK are overwhelmingly honest. However, in every year since 1945, there have been a small number of reports of ‘personation’ (obtaining a vote by pretending to be someone else), but there have been very few prosecutions or convictions. At one time, in the 1960s, it was suggested that personation had become an Olympic Sport in some parts of N Ireland, but no-one suggests it is a significant issue today.

More recently, concerns have been raised about posting vote fraud. Occurrences are not new. As it happens, I was able to see at close hand when, in the early 1980s, Sheffield Liberal Democrat Councillor Malcolm Johnson was convicted of, and imprisoned for, postal vote fraud. He had collected unused postal votes from the homes of recently deceased electors, and then voted for himself.

There have been a small number of well-publicised but isolated examples of postal vote fraud in the near twenty years since electors could choose to have a postal vote instead of having to prove that they were on their deathbed or thousands of miles away on holiday or work.

So, despite a significant amount of well-argued criticism and opposition, this government decided to undertake trials in five areas in the last elections held in May this year, when electors would have to produce ID before they could obtain their voting paper. The government said that “A report from the Electoral Commission showed that allegations of people pretending to be other people to steal their votes doubled nationally between 2014 and 2016.”

However, the results of these pilots are now out. They show that some 350 people were prevented from voting in those five areas because they did not have the right form of ID.

So, how does this compare with the problem of ‘personation’ that these pilots were said to be solving? Well, in 2014, there were 21 alleged cases of personation at a polling station, in 2016 there were 45, but in 2017 the number actually fell again to just 28 cases. Even then, the UK Statistics Authority was critical of this analysis as it did not put its figures in context, they “are not typical of the fuller time series”, which showed an average of 22 cases pa over the last decade.

To summarise, there were 172 alleged cases of personation at a polling station between 2010 and 2017, and in just five small areas, and at a cost of more than £1 million, more than twice as many people (350) who were entitled to vote were actually prevented from voting.

It is time for the government to re-think.

Leaseholders: Tell me now please

The Government is currently working with the Law Commission - the independent legal body charged with reviewing and simplifying the law and for making recommendations for changing or clarifying the law - on certain issues relating to existing leaseholders.

The Government has also promised to undertake further consultation and then propose new legislation on banning new leasehold houses and making restrictions to ground rents.

However, as an all-party committee of MPs concerned with Housing , Communities and Local Government, we are particularly concerned with what more can be done for existing leaseholders, in both houses and flats. There are around four million leasehold homes in England. We’ve heard evidence that leaseholders are often affected by onerous terms such as high service and administrative charges, large increases in ground rents and barriers to buying freeholds.

That’s why we have launched an inquiry¹ into the Government’s leasehold reform programme and in particular how existing leaseholders in both houses and flats facing onerous leasehold terms can be supported. We will examine progress made on leasehold reform, following the conclusion of the Government’s consultation on tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market in 2017.

We want to ensure that any reforms do tackle some of the troubling practices in the sector. We will examine the effectiveness of any proposals, and find out what more needs to be done to boost confidence in the system and ensure fairness for both existing and future leaseholders.

We can only do this if you get involved.

We want you to tell us your views on

• the adequacy of the Government’s programme of work on residential leasehold reform in both houses and flats and whether additional reforms are required
• what the government could do to help existing leaseholders, in both houses and flats, who are affected by onerous leasehold terms; and
• about the implications of providing such support and government intervention to these existing leaseholders.

It’s a really tight timetable. We need to get your written submissions by Friday 7 September 2018.

So, don’t delay. Tell me now please. Just go to:

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/housing-communities-and-local-government-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/leasehold-reform-17-19/commons-written-submission-form/

¹ https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/housing-communities-and-local-government-committee/news/leasehold-reform-launch-17-19/

Not transparent. Don’t like scrutiny.

I’m an optimist by nature. I assume that people will do the right thing, until they don’t.

I understand all about ‘spin’ – promoting the most positive things about your policies, whilst relegating the negative aspects. After all, it would be a surprise if a salesman only told you about the worst features of the product, whilst forgetting to mention the best ones. I suspect his sales bonus wouldn’t amount to much.

And, of course, I’m familiar with some people proclaiming that the glass is half full, whilst their critics will claim it is half empty.

But I don’t think that I can ever remember a time when a government, collectively, and individual government ministers worked so hard to hide the truth, to avoid scrutiny, and to refuse to answer simple questions of fact. It’s like trying to extract blood from a stone.

Let’s just put to one side for a moment – even though Brexit is the single greatest challenge to our social, economic and environmental futures - the 58 reports on the impact of Brexit on particular sectors of the UK economy that the government has consistently refused to publish. Do you think they would be hiding these reports if they told us what a rosy post-Brexit future we should be looking at?

Let’s just look at the last week.

Immediately before Parliament adjourned for the summer recess , and without notice, government ministers made a record-breaking 21 written statements. Most of these had actually been promised weeks ago, but Mrs May held them all back until the last minute to try to avoid any proper parliamentary scrutiny.

In my own special area of interest – housing, communities and local government – the Secretary of State made hugely controversial statements, including

• the National Planning Policy Framework (what some commentators called ‘a green light to developers to build all over the green belt’)
• local government finance when, as each day passes, it seems that another council announces that it is heading for financial ruin because of the government’s cuts in, and repeated failure to agree new arrangements for, adult social care and children’s services
• fundamental changes in the promised devolution of business rates
• big changes to new homes bonus payments mooted, while councils are to be told to increase council tax above inflation rates next year to partially fill the gap
• a whole package of proposed reforms to Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs)
• proposals for filling the big hole that Brexit will cause in finds to support structural change and economic renewal in the poorest areas of England

Then, we learn that, in this last year, government departments applied to keep 7,406 documents from publication by the National Archives, an increase of more than 30 per cent. This is a record level of censorship in the number of official documents that were due to have been made public.

This means that the papers are transferred from Whitehall to the National Archives but remain sealed for years, often decades, before they are declassified. Some have no date set for their release at all.

The number of closure applications dramatically increased from 4250 in 2015 to 5,974 this year. These will be released eventually but at a date well beyond the 20-year rule. There were also 1,432 retention applications, up from 793 in 2015; these are documents without a release date and which may never see the light of day.

However, it is in the very simplest of issues that we can see the real extent of the determined obfuscation, avoidance of revelation of the facts, and authorised ministerial briefing which is simply untrue.

Earlier this year, I revealed that the government’s shambolic changes to national rail timetables would see a significant increase in peak rail journey times between Sheffield and London. A spokesman for the most seriously incompetent cabinet member in the government, Christopher Grayling, told the local and national media that this was not true.

Of course, when the new timetable was published, we find that the journey time of the main train of the day, the Master Cutler, has been increased by 8 minutes.

Ever since then, through written and oral parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests, I and others have been trying to find out when the journey time for the Master Cutler will get back to the 1997, 2007 and 2017 times.

Every request has been met with a response of sickening obfuscation.

We still don’t know the answer to those simple questions.

What I can confirm is that there is not a chance of reducing these increased journey times before 2022 at the very earliest. So much for the government’s commitment to the north.

Leasehold reform?

Just imagine that you wanted to buy a new car.

So, you visited your local car dealer and discussed the options with the salesperson who, from the moment you stepped through the door, was wondering about the size of the commission that might result from any sale.

The salesperson showed you the range of vehicles on offer. You are quite taken by one car, but it’s well outside your price range. ‘Never mind’ said the salesperson. ‘I can make that entirely affordable. We have a special offer for you. You buy the car at 20% less than the price on the windscreen, but you rent the car’s electrical system. The rent is very low – and you can buy the electrics at any time you want - but it doubles every year.’

Tempted?

Probably not, but it’s the sort of deal which some people have found themselves drawn in to when buying their new home. Of course, car life is measured in years rather than decades and cars tend to depreciate rather than hold their value or appreciate, which is why ‘ground rent on the house doubles every ten years’ might not have rung the loud alarm bells that it should have done.

Clearly some house-buyers just didn’t understand the real negative impact on a house’s value that an escalating ground-rent would bring.

There are also some big questions to be asked about the warnings that should have been given by the conveyancing solicitors, especially when the solicitors were acting for both the developer and the purchaser (‘we can save you money by doing this’).

Even bigger questions still need to be asked of the builders and developers who thought they could get away with this building model, at a time when they have already been making record profits and paying multi-million pound bonuses to their directors.

The government has now announced that it plans to ban on the sale of houses on a leasehold basis. However, we are yet to see the details. In the meantime, it really is a case of caveat emptor.

Any legislation will need to carefully distinguish between ‘ground rent for leasehold’ and ‘annual service charges for the maintenance of communal areas and services on the development’. The boss of one large developer of homes for the elderly has been conflating these two things to support his opposition to any ban. No doubt, some lawyers with sharp pencils will be looking to find ways around any such ban.

Meanwhile, the Law Commission – the independent legal body charged with reviewing and simplifying the law and making recommendations for consideration for changing or clarifying the law – has now put forward some proposals to help existing leasehold homeowners to buy the freehold of their houses.

As one of the Commissioners said about the existing situation “… the law is failing homeowners: it’s complex and expensive, and leads to unnecessary conflict, costs and delay.”

The proposed measures include:

• making it easier for lease-owners to buy the freehold
• options for changing the valuation formula, which would reduce the price to be paid for the freehold, whilst still appropriately compensating landlords
• removing the minimum two year requirement before starting a claim

If you are already a leaseholder or you are contemplating the purchase of a leasehold property, I really do recommend that you make the Law Commission’s report¹part of your essential summer reading. It’s an excellent summary of the existing law, the problems and the proposed solutions. And it’s great value as you can download it free!

In September 2018, the Commission intends to publish a consultation paper on enfranchisement. This will propose a new, single regime for leasehold enfranchisement designed to benefit leaseholders of houses and flats. There will then be a public consultation on the proposals; make sure you make your views known.

And, before the end of this year, the Commission also intends to publish consultation papers on commonhold and on the Right to Manage. So, your Autumn and Christmas reading is settled as well.

¹ Leasehold enfranchisement: A summary of proposed solutions for leaseholders of houses, Law Commission

https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2018/07/Solutions-for-Leasehold-Houses.pdf