If you want to buy the house, you've got to sign the deed, and if you sign the deed, you're tying yourself into exactly that, for the length of time you own the house, and the people who buy the house after you also have to pay the estate management charge. It's absurd, especially when the estate eventually becomes, on the whole, adopted. It's madness.

There is a regulatory body—it's called the Association of Residential Managing Agents—but it's voluntary, and currently anyone is able to set up a property and estate management company. Anyone of us in this room could get together—a few of us could get together, set up an estate management company, and then just use it as a licence to print money. That's effectively what's happening. I think ARMA should be a statutory body, of which businesses must be members in order to trade.