Secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold reform

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership

Advising leaseholders. Avoiding disasters.
Stopping forfeiture. Exposing abuses.
Urging reform …

Advice

We advise leaseholders on the perils and pitfalls of the leasehold system, and on how to succeed in a system that is rigged against them by commercial interests

News

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership seeks to report the news from the leasehold sector that affects those who pay for the whole edifice: leaseholders

Parliament

LKP is secretariat of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform, which in the last Parliament had 177 MPs and front bencher ‘friends’

Accreditation

Our accredited block managing agents support the self-governance by flat owners that is standard across the world, except in England and Wales

Trying to prevent the disempowered from losing in the leasehold game

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News

Freeholders face class action over insurance commissions

Peter Bottomley: Many thanks

Michael Gove: ‘squeeze every income stream that freeholders have’. Parliament debates leasehold reform Bill

MPs aghast at Liam Spender’s account of being a leaseholder litigant. It is like ‘being a laboratory animal in a maze controlled by freehold-owning landlords and their enablers’

Most ‘nakedly furious’ BBC documentary in years

Churchill Retirement

Three quarters of Churchill Retirement flats have lost money when resold, says The Times

War of attrition: FirstPort appeals St David’s Square leaseholder victory (after telling leaseholders everyone would be sharing in the win)

Richard Davidoff

Libel lawyers for Richard Davidoff, of ABC Estates, fail to get Google to hand over online reviewers’ identities

If freeholders can’t pay to remediate ‘their’ buildings, they should lose the freeholds and the income streams that come with them

More than 20,000 leaseholders benefit from CMA action over ground rent mis-selling

Sun shines on the leaseholders’ demo at Parliament: after Jenrick, is this a new dawn?

Keep freeholders

Report from Tchenguiz Family Trust, Long Harbour and Wallace Estates seeks to side-line leasehold reforms by fear-mongering over fire safety

Radius scandal Taylor Wimpey

Radius leaseholders rumble Taylor Wimpey for trying to flog off freehold to property punters …

Get commonhold done, London Assembly tells government

LKP vindicated by devastating CMA report into mis-selling of leasehold homes

cladding scandal demo

Cladding scandal Westminster demo, February 25: three mayors, 27 MPs, 300 leaseholders, a swarm of media …

The Times Spread

The Times reports that families ‘lost £3 billion’ on resale of leasehold retirement flats, while developers and freehold speculators made millions

Ruling blasts Israel Moskovitz’s lawyers for ‘wasting tribunal time’ in legal warfare that is ‘part of a pattern’, as RTM gains control of £69,000 funds

Long Harbour hits reverse on forfeiture to £800,000 flat over £400 ground rent … and JB Leitch halves its legal bill

Freehold for Elan Homes leasehold house doubles in price to £15,900 four months after being sold to Landmark Investments

Latest

Nationwide is the mortgage lender most nervy about ground rents, suggests survey by National Leasehold Campaign

Professor Susan Bright

Might consumer protection law be a silver bullet against freeholders’ escalating ground rents? (And the threat to reform?)

Path is set to kill off leasehold and replace it with commonhold

LKP’s guide for leaseholders to respond to government’s proposed permitted insurance fees: the good and not so good

Right to manage reforms announced … days after Chelsea Bridge Wharf wins RTM

Leaseholders win control of 1,132-flat Chelsea Bridge Wharf … which means they also manage the HQ of housebuilder the Berkeley Group

FirstPort suspended from its own trade body the Property Institute

Freeholders win right for a judicial review to challenge 2024 Act

Homes England issued £236k secret fine to shared ownership retirement developer Platinum Skies

NLC recommissions leaseholders’ mental health survey

Government’s leasehold reform announcement was low key, but this is why we think it will deliver

Why it is going to be so important to shout in 2025 – and loudly – when government sets the leasehold Deferment Rate

Eagerstates: BBC finds £1.2m over-charging in 140 tribunal cases over five years

24 Labour MPs invite FirstPort to Westminster to explain ‘consistent complaints’

After begging to keep ground rents, why is McCarthy and Stone saying it now supports commonhold?

Leaseholders in Ilfracombe can claim legal costs against wideboy freeholders over £2.6m wrongly demanded service charges, says Court of Appeal

Spender wards off attempt to frustrate his appeal over £590,000 ‘contract for eternity’ intercom systems

Cladding disaster will cost £16.6 billion, says National Audit Office. Million people stuck in dangerous homes. 2035 is end date for the debacle. Oh, and £500,000 has been stolen (so far)…

Is the betrayal narrative over leasehold reform being over-played?

Freeholders on course for judicial review showdown against leasehold reforms in January

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£100,000

Peverel / FirstPort pays compo – ‘goodwill gesture’ – after collusive tendering racket for electronic door entry systems at retirement sites.

£12 million

Legal and General prompted to pick up the full Grenfell cladding removal cost at Blenheim Centre / Reflexion in Hounslow.

£130 million

Taylor Wimpey puts aside £130 million to re-write the doubling ground rent leases which it dumped on its customers.

£5 billion

After nearly four years of indecision and then piecemeal measures – and still no help from freehold ‘building owners’ – government sets up a cladding removal fund. But …

Would any of this have happened without the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership?

Miseries of shared ownership

Platinum Skies: £63,000 loss on £130,000 shared ownership retirement flat after new owner died 25 days after moving in

Shared ownership: Immensely complex; nothing shared when it comes to costs; clever ‘investors’ scent a revenue source to replace ground rents

APPG on shared ownership: L&Q wrong to hard sell ‘Black Friday’ knock-off flats to buyers. Urgent need for shared ownership re-sale data to be on Land Registry

Call for evidence on shared ownership, from the robust Communities Select Committee

Court of Appeal backs rights of 200,000 shared ownership leaseholders after right to manage duel with Israel Moskovitz

Metropolitan housing association MTVH tells MPs: we won’t collect ground rent, we have ditched marriage value and all leases are 990 years (where possible)

When inflation linked ground rents are worse than ten-year doubling ones. That would be now …

Poltair Homes

Nothing to do with us, says Poltair Homes CEO, over 80 blighted shared ownership houses in Cornwall

Platinum Skies

Retirement housebuilder Platinum Skies breached shared ownership rules with onerous ‘staircasing’ charges in the lease

shared owners

Now shared owners are hit with lease extension costs on top of fire safety costs

LKP cladding scandal survey

LKP backs Sadiq Khan demand that ALL shared ownership leases to be 999 years

Housing associations furious at government’s 10-year repair-free offer to new shared owners

City Wharf Hoxton

A2 Dominion to dump 100% cladding costs on to 25% shared owners at City Wharf Hoxton

Giles Peaker shared ownership

Shared ownership: a misnomer that can be worse than renting and worse than leasehold, says solicitor

shared ownership price falls

Telegraph reports plummeting value of shared ownership flats

Notting Hill Genesis cladding

Brexit day prisoner: Polish father desperate to sell Notting Hill Genesis cladding flat to join ailing family back home

Housing association Network Homes seeks to dump some of its £200m cladding costs on leaseholders

London Assembly members

Shared ‘ownership’ is NOT ownership. It’s the ‘pay-day loan’ of housing and most regret having bought, London Assembly told

Tory MP Stephen McPartland shames Long Harbour / Adriatic Land into dropping doubling ground rent leases

Advertising Standards Authority rules against Notting Hill Genesis on over-egged shared ownership adverts

See more cladding scandal

Ground rent scandal

Clive Betts: removing onerous ground rents is ‘completely compatible with the European convention on human rights’

Freeholds aren’t worth £27.3bn. They are worth what someone might pay for them today

Freeholders face £27.3bn fall in asset values if ground rents reduced to peppercorn, says government

Bottomley to raise with Churchill Retirement its decision to continue charging ground rents

Steinbeck Grange

Barratt off the hook from CMA over mis-selling leasehold homes

CMA slaps down doubling ground rents of 15 punters who bought cheating freeholds from Countryside Properties plc

JB Leitch

Blunder forces Pier Management and debt collector JB Leitch to scrap £3,265 late ground rent bill (and forfeiture threat that accompanied it)

Sucking a lemon, the Leasehold Advisory Service notes the ground rent Act – which it did absolutely nothing to assist

Open letter to Taylor Wimpey: If you cared about sorting out your ground rent mess, you can pay back the money your own ex-customers have wasted over this scandal

Taylor Wimpey CMA

Reverse ferret: Taylor Wimpey NOW agrees to sort out re-sale buyers of its rip-off ground rent leasehold properties

Taylor Wimpey ground rents

CMA forces Taylor Wimpey to sort out rip-off ten-year doubling ground rents

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill

Time to tell MPs what you think about the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill – and why it must not be nobbled

See more ground rent scandal