Thank you very much. Thank you for bringing this issue to the Assembly's attention. I'm very pleased to be able to participate in this debate. At the outset, I want to refer to one example—just one example but one that's quite complex and demonstrates the problems in this area, and one I'm very familiar with in my constituency. I want to mention a block of flats built for people over the age of 55, which were sold with leaseholds attached. Most of those who purchased those flats are now in their 80s and 90s. At the outset, a residents' association was established in the flats, but as the residents grow older nobody now takes responsibility for being on the committee, and this association that used to work for the benefit of the residents has now lapsed.

Some four years ago, the lease was sold to a company located a long way from my constituency. The company is based in the Channel Islands, and they now own the lease on the flats. This company has two levels of management and it's very difficult to communicate with them. The costs for the residents have increased swiftly. The outside of the flats were redecorated at a cost of £100,000. The work was of a poor standard and the roof is leaking in one of the flats. The company that holds the lease—that's the company in the Channel Islands and their agent—makes all of the decisions, and, of course, it's the residents who have to pay the bills. Any attempt to challenge the decisions has to be made by individuals because the residents' association came to an end. I don't need to tell you that their efforts aren't getting much success.

That's just one example of how leaseholds can create great anguish, and this trend for more and more developers to sell homes on leasehold is an increasing cause for concern. Some purchasers do get 999-year-long leaseholds—a very long time, one would think, which possibly may actually alleviate some of the anxiety at the beginning of the process—but discover later that buying the freehold is exceptionally expensive.

One trap for these buyers is the increase in ground rent, which is hidden in the small print of these long leasehold contracts. At the outset, it looks affordable and the contract says that the ground rent will double every 10 years. That can look innocuous, after all most people move house every seven to 10 years or so. But for the company buying the leasehold, the income is very valuable and doubling something every 10 years very soon makes it profitable, and before long it’s impossible for the residents to afford the ground rent, and therefore it’s virtually impossible to sell the home, with solicitors warning prospective buyers to stay away. So, young people, after years of paying rent, at last buy a house and then find themselves still, in reality, being tenants, because that’s what a leaseholder is ultimately, with all the disbenefits attached to that.

I’m going to use this debate to draw attention to just a few other problems that have emerged in terms of newer housing developments—I hope you’ll forgive me for doing so, and to stray a little off topic, but they are certainly related. Recently, the cross-party parliamentary group on excellence in the built environment—which is a long and complex title—published a report on the quality of housing that were new builds across the UK. This report discovered that 93 per cent of buyers mentioned problems to the construction companies, and of those, 35 per cent mentioned 11 or more problems. These are problems that the buyers have to pay to put right—a matter for our consideration in the same context, therefore.

Another problem is the number of housing estates the length and breadth of Wales that are unfinished. What happens very often is that a developer will take more than a decade from when the first house is sold to the time when the final house is sold and completed. In the meantime, residents face problems with rubbish collections, no social facilities available and so on, and as we will see in a debate that’s to take place next week, roads remaining unadopted. This is all before you start to think about other related issues, such as land banking, for example, where there is no intention at all to bring a project to conclusion, and also a lack of community infrastructure for these new developments.

So, there are a number of related problems there, and as far as I can see, there is a fundamental problem that we’re facing here: since the financial crash 10 years ago, fewer companies are involved in the market and they are larger companies and therefore there is less competition. This, ultimately, is damaging for house owners and gives unfair advantages to these large companies when it comes to the matter of funding new developments, getting planning permission, public procurement, and so on.

Therefore, I would encourage the Welsh Government to consider these issues too when you are seeking ways of dealing with the issue of leaseholds, because it is part of a wider range of problems emerging from less competition in the house-building sector. Thank you.