Labour to modernise feudal leasehold system in response to Tory inaction

By Dermot McKibbin

On 11 July there was a debate in the Commons on the Government’s response to the House of Commons Select Committee critical report on the leasehold tenure.

The Government claims to be bringing forward reforms to:

Ban the granting of new leases on houses other than in exceptional circumstances.
Restricting ground rents on newly established leases to zero.
Working with the Law Commission to look at ways to reinvigorate commonhold and improving the process for buying a freehold or extending a lease, or exercising The Right to Manage.
By reviewing charges faced by both leaseholders and freeholders and professionalising and regulating property agents.
By clamping down on unjustified legal costs for leaseholders, ensuring all landlord freeholders belong to a redress scheme and giving freeholders on private estates equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge communal costs.
By persuading developers to sign up a to public pledge to…