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

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

The Building Safety Bill: what do the government’s amendments mean for leaseholders?

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

Do NOT buy a new property with ground rents

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 …

Robert Jenrick Richard Desmond

Has Jenrick been saved by the Cummings furore for rushing through approval of 1,500 home Docklands scheme that would have handed £40m to former publisher Richard Desmond?

Sir Bob Neill Grenfeel cladding

Sir Bob Neill becomes cladding chair at APPG

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 …

fatcat freeholders

Fatcat freeholders SHAMED by MHCLG for having no plan to remove Grenfell cladding from their buildings include Long Harbour and James Tuttiett

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

Ground Rent Addicts Anonymous sign Brokenshire’s pledge (three years after the scandal they created and denied existed)

Taxpayer boost for offshore speculators as Help To Buy lands 17,000 home buyers in leasehold

Lawyers to Communities Select Committee: Stop ‘sticking plaster reforms’. End ‘draconian’ forfeiture. £10 ground rents a ‘mistake’. Make legal costs fair to leaseholders. Commonhold failed because developers make money out of leasehold …

Latest

Deadline today for freeholders to declare offshore beneficial ownership

Mr Spender goes to war over St David’s Square service charges … and landlord caves in over more than £100,000 buildings insurance commissions on eve of tribunal

Michael Gove’s admission today that regulation failures in part caused Grenfell clears path to final resolution of the building safety crisis

After seven efforts at reform – with more on the way – Sections 21 and 22 of Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 are still flawed service charge protections

Why not impose a revived Florrie’s Law cap on council major works rather than see leaseholders made homeless?

Spare a thought for the forgotten Welsh building safety cladding victims

John Christodoulou ‘lamentable’ lack of transparency over excessive £1.6m insurance costs at Canary Riverside

Railpen: We don’t want to invest in ground rents anymore because ‘there is a consumer on the far end’

£100k major works bills wipe out council leaseholders. But why are 40% of Right To Buy homes now owned by investors?

At last a housing minister who seems to want to reform leasehold, and knows legal costs are being gamed to keep freeholders on top

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)

Another buy-to-let leaseholder landlord faces ruin over building safety costs

RMC / RTM directors threaten mass resignation if ‘building safety directors’ are imposed

As the tide turns on UK property, any sympathy for this baby boomer investor: ‘I own three cladding flats and two other investment properties. I am considering bankruptcy …’

Wyldecrest thwarts attempts by park home activist Tony Turner to provide statement of accounts in upper property tribunal

Park home demonstrators demand end to 10% sales fees – as litany of crooked practice reported to MPs

Richard Davidoff

Richard Davidoff given the boot as section 24 court appointed manager after expulsion from ARMA, IRPM and Propertymark

FCA authorised firms that are coining more than 40% profits out of leasehold insurance, and here’s how:

LKP’s response to the Financial Conduct Authority report on leasehold buildings insurance

St David's Square

FirstPort jacks up accounting fees at St David’s Square by 80% … and then bodges accounts, leaving leaseholders overcharged by more than £17,500

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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?

Building safety scandal

Greg Clark MP

No ‘backsliding’ on Gove’s £3bn building safety levy, says his successor Greg Clark

MPs join leaseholders at protest to ensure no one is left facing building safety cash calls

Lendlease

Michael Gove gets the cartel of taxpayer subsidised housebuilders to pay up £5bn towards the building safety scandal … but not Lendlease or Galliard

Building Safety Bill

Government dumps Dame Judith Hackitt’s ‘building safety managers’, but what do the latest amendments to the Building Safety Bill mean for leaseholders?

Will government dump Dame Judith Hackitt’s £60,000 a year building safety managers job creation scheme?

Leaseholders helped over building safety crisis is now a ‘bizarre lucky dip’, say MPs

Ted Baillieu: Your misconceived Twitter thread over the ‘polluter pays’ amendment should be removed

After cladding leaseholders issue damning report into housing associations’ response, housing minister Lord Greenhalgh lashes out at ‘sanctity of social housing providers that have built rubbish’

Fletcher Court

Hallmark Property Group seeks to put 44 flats worth £15m on top of a block with ACM cladding, waking watch, a B2 rating after EWS1 … and 75 utterly stressed out leaseholders

Not waiting for Gove: Kelly Tolhurst MP urges freeholder Israel Moskovitz to halt court action against leaseholders over £2m cladding and building safety costs

Morello Quarter

Morello Quarter leaseholders stall ruinous cost of waking watch, but how useful is court decision for others?

Building Safety Bill

The Building Safety Bill: what’s next and what can leaseholders do?

Taylor Wimpey cladding

Taylor Wimpey to pay fire safety works on sites built over past 20 years. (But what’s the catch, as with their tricksy doubling ground plan?)

Norges Bank Investment Management

Gove backs cladding leaseholders in urging investor Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) to make UK housebuilders pay for build defects

Michael Gove cladding

In Gove we trust, but developers can pay cash

Data tells us sprinklers work, waking watch doesn’t, and freehold punters aren’t picking up the tab, Martin Boyd tells ODI

Hackitt and Knight back dumping unregulated sector-insider ‘building safety managers’ onto leaseholders at £60,000 a year, MPs told

Dame Judith Hackitt

Dame Judith Hackitt says cladding leaseholders risk ruin with rip-off charges. She wants to help. But is still at sea over leasehold law …

St David's Square

Fees come first for FirstPort: leaseholders billed at least £39,000 for applications to the Building Safety Fund … And so it begins

EWS1 debacle

EWS1 on under 18m high buildings … is still an utter mess

See more cladding scandal

Ground rent scandal

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

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

Sir Desmond Swayne

Few disagreements over banning ground rents, but last minute effort to keep them for retirement properties by Theresa Villiers and Sir Desmond Swayne

Lobbying alert: Theresa Villiers MP speaks up for ground rents, freehold owners and making sure marriage value still pays off for freehold investors

Countryside Properties plc

CMA forces Countryside Properties plc to strike out doubling ground rents: it was selling them as late as May 2017!

See more ground rent scandal