Fleeceholds are hampering new housing targets

The government has set out ambitious housing targets to get Britain building, deliver the homes that we need in the North East, and tackle the housing crisis.

Delivering homes will provide security and opportunity to families, create good local jobs and deliver the growth that we need.

My constituency of Cramlington and Killingworth, by its nature on the North West of North Tyneside, South East of Northumberland and North of Newcastle has already seen lots of development over the past decade in areas like Dinnington, Cramlington and Shiremoor, and continues to grow.

New estates have helped to deliver homes that families desperately need, but it’s also shone a light on how the current system for managing new estates simply isn’t fit for purpose.

Residents on new estates are left, often for many years, with unfinished roads and pavements, a lack of community facilities, unkept green spaces and basics such as streetlights not working.

Many are left paying ‘estate management fees’ and ‘service charges’ on top of their Council Tax, for the ‘upkeep’ of their estates to unaccountable management companies. Fees that are opaque, open-ended, and impossible to challenge.

Left years on end without completion timeframes or any ability to compel developers to finish even the most basic works, residents are left frustrated. Developers move off their estates to their next developments without the basics in place, with little engagement or accountability.

This isn’t just the experience in my constituency, but across the country, people left in limbo, works uncompleted, councils unable to adopt estates, and residents paying the price – twice – through their Council Tax and additional fees.

That’s why I am co-sponsoring the Housing Estates Bill, which seeks to address these issues, giving greater protections and assurances to residents on new estates.

The Bill, if supported in Parliament, would give residents the right to manage estates, secure minimum standards for public amenities with enforcement, as well as a pathway towards adoption by local councils.

We rightly need to be building homes across the country and the government has a mandate to do that, but we must ensure that those living on new estates, and the new estates of the future, have the protections that they need.

Only by doing this can we provide confidence for future developments and meet the ambitious housing targets.

The Housing Estates Bill is a step in this direction. Let’s tackle the fleecehold scandal and hold developers and management companies to account, bringing the estates to the point that they can be adopted by councils swiftly, and ending the misery of those living on new estates.

Emma Foody: Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Cramlington and Killingworth.

Originally published in the Journal 17 March 2025