The UK’s property management trade body has suspended FirstPort’s membership for a period of three months following complaints from leaseholders whose properties it has been managing.
The Property Institute (TPI) has issued a statement saying: “Following independent adjudication, ‘FirstPort Property Services Limited (FirstPort)’ has been suspended from TPI Company membership due to a breach of membership rules”.
The company, which grew from a small Hampshire estate agency, claims on its website that it is the ‘UK’s leading residential property manager’ with over 400,000 leasehold homes on its books.
It has, though, been at the centre of a number of controversies. And, after residents of Crown Heights and Regent Court in Basingstoke complained to their MP about the company, it was summoned to Parliament (main image) to answer questions over its “excessive service charge hikes, failure to complete critical building maintenance and poor responsiveness to resident concerns.”
I’ve had dozens and dozens of complaints about FirstPort’s unacceptable service charge hikes, poor service and lack of responsiveness and transparency.”
The Basingstoke Gazette reports that David Pinto-Duschinsky MP, who co-chaired the meeting with FirstPort, said: “I’ve had dozens and dozens of complaints about FirstPort’s unacceptable service charge hikes, poor service and lack of responsiveness and transparency.
“All too often they are using leaseholders as little more than cash cows to be milked for every penny. People are paying more and more, and getting less and less.
Enough is enough
“Enough is enough. This group of Labour MPs has come together to do everything we can to hold these unscrupulous managing agents to account.
“We strongly support everything the Government intends to do to reform the leasehold system and are determined to do all we can alongside that to hold failing managing agents to account. Today’s meeting is just the start of that.”
When Housing Minister Mathew Pennycook was later asked what he would do with agents such as FirstPort, he said: “We are very much aware that some managing agents provide a very poor quality of service”.
He added: “Managing agents play a key role in the maintenance of multi-occupancy buildings and freehold estates, and their importance will only grow as we transition towards a commonhold future.
“As such, we have made it clear that we will strengthen the regulation of managing agents to drive up the standard of their service, and we are considering carefully the recommendations made in Lord Best’s 2019 report on regulating the property agent sector.”
FirstPort response
FirstPort told MPs at the meeting that it is reviewing its procurement, transparency, and other processes, but has also release a statement, saying: “One of our TPI memberships has been temporarily put on hold until the beginning of March whilst we review and improve an internal process.
“This does not relate to core business-wide practices, but to a specific issue in our handover process to a new managing agent, which commenced in 2023.
“We have responded positively to the issue raised and we will continue to make improvements to our ways of working. We remain committed to continuing our work with TPI to improve standards across the industry.”
Photo: Noah Law, Labour MP for St Austell & Newquay