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

Work with this leasehold reform Bill, or wait for Utopia? Minimum: another 3 more years

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

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 …

Communities Select Committee lifts the lid on the residential freehold racket

Latest

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

McCarthy and Stone makes ‘goodwill’ payment of £40,000 to Oak Court, but leaseholder drops article for LKP after phone call from the company’s lawyer

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

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill: the most important part of the enfranchisement bit is missing

Marriage value? Let’s have an acrimonious divorce!

New chair of LEASE tells MPs: time for the leasehold system to go gentle into that good night

Leasehold reforms: respond to government consultation over ground rents before 21 December (because those legging you over will certainly be doing so)

Minister Rachel Maclean claims leasehold reform will be ‘a generational transformation’. Hugely welcome changes, but it’s scaled back as the government runs on borrowed time

First step for major leasehold reforms: Martin Boyd appointed chair of Leasehold Advisory Service

Southwark council meets its leaseholders. Lambeth pays them off (and deploys NDAs)

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

Park home owners demo against 10% sales commissions

Marriage Value: How your freeholder hitches a ride on the uplift of value on your flat

Odevo rivals FirstPort as largest managing agent after hoovering up rivals

We all agree, yet we are still waiting for the leasehold reforms promised years ago, says Katie Kendrick

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

Jack Spearman

We support leasehold reform but not abolishing it and leaseholders are served by ground rents, says the Residential Freehold Association

Rachel Maclean MP

Housing Minister Rachel Maclean pledges to reform LEASE, calls out Churchill Retirement Living, pledges to end the ‘assured tenancy trap’ and reiterates commitments to reform leasehold

FirstPort / E&J Estates face insurance challenge over ramping up rebuild costs

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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

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

Spare a thought for the forgotten Welsh building safety cladding victims

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 …’

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’

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

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

See more cladding scandal

Ground rent scandal

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

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

See more ground rent scandal