London Leaseholder

This is shaping up to be a blockbuster hearing! On Tuesday, our campaign will appear before a Commons Housing Select Committee inquiry into the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill. We’ll be truth-telling on how the draft Bill fails leaseholders.

A remarkable @spectator story. @Simmons__ details how @RachelReevesMP has let the City shape policy — leaving leaseholders stuck with money-for-nothing ground rents until 2068 and legislation delayed to the dying minutes of the Parliament. Do read! spectator.com/article/its-a-…

Tom, you’re a smart bloke. Buyers need sellers. But people are now boycotting flats after scandals and campaigns like ours showed how the leasehold tenure strips residents of control over service charges. Time for you and the YIMBYs to back commonhold. Let’s do this!

Matthew, blaming the Tories at this stage of government is “dog ate my homework” stuff. The human cost of leasehold is immense and continues to grow due to this government’s constant foot-dragging. A poll by Opinium last year found that nearly half of leaseholders say leasehold has prevented them from starting a family, rising to 56% in London. According to your November 2024 statement, you and the then housing secretary were informed of alleged defects in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (‘LAFRA’) in July 2024. So, you and @mhclg have had 18 months to make the necessary fixes in primary legislation. Not good enough! Indeed, you have had two legislative vehicles to use, either the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 or the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. There is precedent: defects in the Building Safety Act 2022 were fixed via the unrelated Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. You and this @UKLabour government have made a political choice to sit on LAFRA and let the legislation rust while leaseholders continue being looted in their homes. In November 2024, you promised that the LAFRA enfranchisement reforms would go out to public consultation in the summer of 2025. This never happened. Even though your government won against the freeholders in their judicial review trolling, with a very favourable High Court decision at the beginning of October, there has been no movement. Now we are being told to keep waiting, and that the consultation should be coming in “months”. This week, it has been suggested that the headline measure of the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill, a ground rent cap, will be coming on stream at the end of 2028, perilously close to the next general election. No wonder our supporters feel like they are being played, just as they were by the Tories. Since 2020, when the @Law_Commission published its final recommendations, leaseholders have been waiting desperately for change, and you want us to keep our lives on hold for years more? Also, even when you activate the LAFRA enfranchisement reforms, without restricting development value, most leaseholders will still not be able to afford to buy out their freeholder. They are still being forced to compensate freeholders for phantom two storeys or the hypothetical “I could build a skyscraper in the garden, pay me half a million on top” scenario. You have junked the remaining 2020 Law Commission recommendations on enfranchisement that would resolve this, alongside the remaining 2020 Law Commission recommendations on Right to Manage, both of which were promised in the @UKLabour manifesto and the King’s Speech for this draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill. We also need the deferment and capitalisation rates to be set high in the LAFRA secondary legislation so leaseholders can afford to extend a lease or buy the freehold. If you bring them lower than the current position, leaseholders will be paying more than today. That would be obscene, but totally on the cards from the behaviour we are seeing. On this issue of not screwing leaseholders with the rates, in opposition, you moved an excellent amendment to what became LAFRA, but the Tories rejected it. Two years out from the last general election, you rightly slammed Tory delays as “too long to wait”. Now, under a Labour government with the second biggest parliamentary majority in your party’s 126-year history, elected on a manifesto to END leasehold, leaseholders are seeing all the same talk and foot dragging. “Too long to wait” indeed. Voters hate seeing governments pretending to be powerless. No wonder disruptors like @ZackPolanski are licking their lips at your weakness in standing up for the people against Big Money.

Matthew, blaming the Tories at this stage of government is “dog ate my homework” stuff. The human cost of leasehold is immense and continues to grow due to this government’s constant foot-dragging. A poll by Opinium last year found that nearly half of leaseholders say leasehold has prevented them from starting a family, rising to 56% in London. According to your November 2024 statement, you and the then housing secretary were informed of alleged defects in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (‘LAFRA’) in July 2024. So, you and @mhclg have had 18 months to make the necessary fixes in primary legislation. Not good enough! Indeed, you have had two legislative vehicles to use, either the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 or the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025. There is precedent: defects in the Building Safety Act 2022 were fixed via the unrelated Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. You and this @UKLabour government have made a political choice to sit on LAFRA and let the legislation rust while leaseholders continue being looted in their homes. In November 2024, you promised that the LAFRA enfranchisement reforms would go out to public consultation in the summer of 2025. This never happened. Even though your government won against the freeholders in their judicial review trolling, with a very favourable High Court decision at the beginning of October, there has been no movement. Now we are being told to keep waiting, and that the consultation should be coming in “months”. This week, it has been suggested that the headline measure of the draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill, a ground rent cap, will be coming on stream at the end of 2028, perilously close to the next general election. No wonder our supporters feel like they are being played, just as they were by the Tories. Since 2020, when the @Law_Commission published its final recommendations, leaseholders have been waiting desperately for change, and you want us to keep our lives on hold for years more? Also, even when you activate the LAFRA enfranchisement reforms, without restricting development value, most leaseholders will still not be able to afford to buy out their freeholder. They are still being forced to compensate freeholders for phantom two storeys or the hypothetical “I could build a skyscraper in the garden, pay me half a million on top” scenario. You have junked the remaining 2020 Law Commission recommendations on enfranchisement that would resolve this, alongside the remaining 2020 Law Commission recommendations on Right to Manage, both of which were promised in the @UKLabour manifesto and the King’s Speech for this draft Leasehold and Commonhold Reform Bill. We also need the deferment and capitalisation rates to be set high in the LAFRA secondary legislation so leaseholders can afford to extend a lease or buy the freehold. If you bring them lower than the current position, leaseholders will be paying more than today. That would be obscene, but totally on the cards from the behaviour we are seeing. On this issue of not screwing leaseholders with the rates, in opposition, you moved an excellent amendment to what became LAFRA, but the Tories rejected it. Two years out from the last general election, you rightly slammed Tory delays as “too long to wait”. Now, under a Labour government with the second biggest parliamentary majority in your party’s 126-year history, elected on a manifesto to END leasehold, leaseholders are seeing all the same talk and foot dragging. “Too long to wait” indeed. Voters hate seeing governments pretending to be powerless. No wonder disruptors like @ZackPolanski are licking their lips at your weakness in standing up for the people against Big Money.