Written on 11 November 2019 by Giles Cook in Property News
A prominent campaigner is calling for action on leasehold reform – and asking leaseholders to petition their MPs on the issue in the run up to the general election on 12 December.
Following a delay in the publication of a Law Commission report on leasehold reform, Louie Burns, of enfranchisement specialists Leasehold Solutions Group, has launched his 10-point manifesto.
The manifesto calls for measures to make the process of enfranchisement easier and cheaper including:
- Ensuring that all buildings can qualify for a freehold acquisition or the Right to Manage process.
- Regulating managing agents, to ensure that costs are transparent.
- Banning a loophole, which allows freeholders to convert a lease into an assured shorthold tenancy.
- Following through with the pledge to ban the sale of leasehold new-build houses.
- Setting ground rents on new-build flats to zero to end the practice of onerous charges.
- Ensuring that leaseholders are not liable to pay for the removal of flammable cladding, such as that used on Grenfell Tower.
- Protecting leaseholders from forfeiting their lease if they owe small amounts of ground rent or cannot pay for major works.
According to Louie Burns: “Leaseholders deserve the reforms they have been promised, to make leasehold enfranchisement quicker, easier and cheaper. Our manifesto proposes the radical reforms that are necessary to quickly end the leasehold scandal and we hope that the Law Commission will follow suit by publishing similarly bold recommendations for the government to consider.”
Speaking before the election was announced he said: “With an early election now inevitable, leasehold reform is a real vote winner. Leaseholders need to make their voices heard now by petitioning their MPs harder than ever, or face losing the chance for significant leasehold reform for another generation.”
Read more about this story in Landlord Today.
