A new lease of life: - CentreForum

A New Lease of Lifefor a probationary period. 104 If it employed experienced staff withexisting qualifications, it would not have to pay to retrain them.The costs associated with being regulated would include alicence or registration fee (including ombudsman subscription),training courses and costs of in-house complaints and mediationprocedures. We have shown that a regulatory regime would not beunduly expensive and it is likely that a licence would cost less thanoverall membership of existing self-regulating bodies. 105 Membersof ARMA and RICS already face the internal costs of complying withtheir regulatory systems, so would not face significant additionalcosts following the introduction of a regulator. Similarly, unaffiliatedmanaging agents which already have these important proceduresin place will not have significant extra costs of complying. Rather,additional costs would be incurred by new or existing managingagents who do not meet acceptable standards.So although independent regulation will create costs, these willonly fall on new and existing firms which do not subscribe toself-regulation or the in-house support procedures which arevital to provide a good quality of service. There is no reasonwhy independent regulation should cost more per licencee thanvoluntary self-regulation, and it will do considerably more to rootout incompetent managing agents.Leasehold Valuation Tribunal reformAlthough the tribunal system can have significant barriers toaccess, it performs an essential adjudication function below (andmore accessible than) a full court. Rather than wholesale reform,we propose three changes that would make the process fairer andmore effective.First, the rules over cost awards are skewed unnecessarily infreeholders’ favour. Whilst freeholders can, in some circumstances,reclaim their full ‘reasonable’ costs from a case, the most that atribunal can award leaseholders in compensation is £500. It isimportant that the tribunal does not expand its remit to become asignificant awarder of costs, but it would be fairer for the tribunal104 This model is used in New South Wales, where firms entering the managingagent industry apply initially for a certificate of registration. See the Property,Stock and Business Agents Act 2002.105 A regulator should not cost more than ARMA, for example, which has majorcosts beyond regulation and lessee information provision, which are not itsprimary functions.59