By Matt Rodda
Our country is facing a housing emergency.
People are struggling with rising mortgage payments, soaring rents, and a lack of genuinely affordable housing options. These factors, combined with stagnating wages and rising household bills, have meant that many local families are finding it hard to make ends meet.
For those living in leasehold properties, I am aware that these pressures are only exacerbated by the additional financial burden of ground rents and service charges.
I have long been concerned by the issues being faced by leaseholders in our community.
Too many leaseholders tell me that they face constant struggles with punitive and ever rising ground rents. They are often locked into expensive agreements and face unjustified administration fees and extortionate charges.
Conditions are imposed with little or no consultation, and for leaseholders also affected by the building safety crisis, the situation is even worse.
I have been speaking to a number of constituents facing these issues, and I have recently raised their concerns in parliament during the latest reading of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
I welcome many measures within the Bill, including changes to the calculation of premium payable for lease extensions or collectively buying the freehold, the end of marriage value, introduction of 990-year extensions, ground rent reforms, and freehold estate regulation.
However, the Bill as introduced is a far cry from what successive Ministers have led leaseholders across the country to believe would be enacted by this Government in this Parliament.
I am concerned that it does not include any of the Law Commission’s recommendations to reinvigorate commonhold.
It is also disappointing that the government appears set on legislating only for new houses to be sold as freehold, leaving those who buy flats – accounting for 70% of all leasehold properties – trapped in an archaic system of home ownership that almost every country in the world apart from Britain has either reformed or abolished.
It is clear that these reforms need to go further. Labour has committed to implementing the recommendations of the Law Commission’s three reports on leasehold in full.
A Labour government will make commonhold the default tenure for all new properties and we are determined to reinvigorate commonhold to such an extent that it will become the default and render leasehold obsolete.
I am committed to supporting efforts to strengthen this legislation as it progresses. As part of this work, I have been asking constituents living in leasehold properties to help me by sharing their experiences in my local consultation so that I can raise their concerns in parliament.
I am grateful to all those who have contributed so far.
If you have an experience of leasehold that you would like to share, you can do so by completing my survey on the following link: https://mattroddamp.com/leaseholdexperience
Matt Rodda is the Labour MP for Reading East
