Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:24 pm on 19 June 2019.
I do commend you for reading the report. England and Wales law is often common in this area, and I think there are lessons to be learnt, and I think the House of Commons committee's done a great service here.
Estate management fees as well as service charges have been criticised for their size, lack of transparency and the difficulty with which they can be challenged. Those are certainly problems that we have in Wales. And Which?, the consumer organisation, has pointed out that no new-build housing estate should have their roads as the responsibility of the leaseholder, yet this is happening more and more at the moment. Often, as the report indicates, developers blame the local council, the council blames the developers and it's an unholy mess.
I have met with residents on a new-build estate within my own region and they've informed me that they're in a conflict between the estate and the local council and the developer over the adoption of a main road through the estate, which is a bus route. And despite that road being a key bus route, it's not at the moment going to be adopted. This is just a crazy situation. The planners should never allow it and the developers should not be allowed to produce roads of inadequate quality when they're clearly marked as being required to be bus routes.