Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I repeat the declarations of interest that I made in Committee. I am a director of a large private property investment and development group, Emerson Development Holdings, which builds about 450 homes a year and operates its own customer charter. I have a declarable shareholding in Pochin’s plc., a quoted public company in property development and building services, which has a small house-building division. These Benches offer broad support to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in his Amendment No. 88. I pay tribute to what he has tried to achieve in protecting the public both in this Bill and previously. He brings his years of professional experience to this subject. I do not wish to repeat the arguments that we made in Committee; essentially, we seek to expand the scope of the Bill to include both property lettings and direct sales from builders/developers to the public.On lettings, many tenants, particularly of cheaper properties, are by definition far less likely to be ableto afford to employ qualified advisers when contemplating a tenancy. Our contention is that they need protecting from unscrupulous agents. In addition, in recent years there have been a substantial number of purpose-built flat developments for letting, particularly in our major cities. Buy-to-let investors, often with limited property experience, have bought blocks of individual flats hoping to benefit from their capital appreciation rather than developing a genuine, long-term landlord/tenant relationship. Should the property market turn down and/or interest rates rise, as they have done recently, those investors may well have to dump the properties on the market, cutting their losses and perhaps allowing an unscrupulous landlord/investor to come in. As agents of mixed qualifications and integrity are likely to be involved at a number of stages, we believe that tenants should have a right of redress. I am particularly pleased that the National Association of Estate Agents supports bringing residential lettings into this legislation. On sales, the approach by the noble Earl effectively enables the activities of builders/developers selling directly to the public to be classified as estate agency work and therefore subject to the redress scheme. Although the majority of such developers are usually covered by HBF or NHBC charter, we still feel that a redress scheme would provide additional protection for the public.