By Sebastian O’Kelly The government’s engagement with leasehold abuses is revealed in a lurching, one-step-forward and one-step-back reaction to the Communities Select Committee’s excellent critique of the sector, published today. There are some good things, such as “unfair practices in the leasehold market that can turn people’s home ownership dreams into a nightmare”. That’s true […]
London mayor Sadiq Khan launches leasehold advice portal and slams LEASE as ‘unfit for purpose’
London mayor Sadiq Khan has launched a new leasehold advice portal, and has condemned the taxpayer-funded Leasehold Advisory Service as “unfit for purpose”. He also backed “wholesale reform of leasehold, including a long-term shift toward alternative tenures such as commonhold”. Today’s statement from the mayor’s office reads: “Government funds the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) – […]
New LEASE chair declines to endorse peppercorn ground rents on BBC
And there will be no leaseholders on the board of LEASE The new chair of the controversial quango the Leasehold Advisory Service declined an invitation to endorse no-monetary value ground rents on BBC R4’s You and Yours today. Instead, Wanda Goldwag said only that contracts should be “fair”. Former Communities Secretary Sajid Javid undertook to […]
New interim chair for troubled quango LEASE
Wanda Goldwag, a former marketing executive for British Airways, has been appointed interim chair of the controversial Leasehold Advisory Service. Ms Goldwag, who ran BA’s Air Miles, is chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, which controls the legal ombudsman service for England and Wales. Four trustees of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership have been declined […]
Leasehold Advisory Service has ‘been under review’ for 10 years. Here are the findings …
The Leasehold Advisory Service, the government funded Leasehold Advisory Service, has been under review by the government for much of the last ten years. This seems to suggest that something is wrong, yet the government’s long-standing support for the Leasehold Advisory Service continues. LKP has, after many requests, obtained the two most recent reviews of […]
Can the Leasehold Advisory Service monopoly survive devastating questioning by Select Committee?
– Select Committee deluged with complaints about taxpayer funded organisation – It failed to alert government to scandals over ground rents and proliferation of leasehold houses – Why did it hold seminars advising freeholders how to exploit leaseholders? – ‘Huge credibility problem’ for LEASE among leaseholders, says MP: it is working against them – Why […]
Even if you only respond to one question, take part in the Law Commission consultation!
By Sebastian O’Kelly LKP and the National Leasehold Campaign are organising a public meeting for leaseholders with the Law Commission tomorrow afternoon. Law Commissioner Professor Nicholas Hopkins and his team will explain their work on enfranchisement, lease extension and commonhold. Other speakers will include Professor Susan Bright, of Oxford University, and barrister Amanda Gourlay. There […]
LKP’s essential leasehold guide in The Sunday Times … feel free to add
By Sebastian O’Kelly It was good to be able to use a small Q&A article in yesterday’s Sunday Times to offer a mini guide for leaseholders. This is the sort of thing the Leasehold Advisory Service should be putting out, if it were not in thrall to the commercialisers in the sector. Indeed, it was […]
Is LEASE an institutionally corrupted organisation?
“Institutional corruption is manifest when there is a systemic and strategic influence which is legal, or even currently ethical, that undermines the institution’s effectiveness by diverting it from its purpose or weakening its ability to achieve its purpose, including, to the extent relevant to its purpose, weakening either the public’s trust in that institution or […]
Martin Boyd should be the chair of LEASE
By Sebastian O’Kelly, LKP trustee There is only one outstanding candidate to be chair of LEASE and that is Martin Boyd. He is the only person involved in leasehold activism with the knowledge and abilities that will hold credibility with the sector. He is respected on this subject by ministers, MPs and civil servants. As […]
LEASE chair Roger Southam resigns
The taxpayer-funded Leasehold Advisory Service, LEASE, has announced this evening that its non-executive chair, Roger Southam, has resigned with immediate effect. No explanation for the resignation is given, but it follows calls from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership that he resign, questions in the Commons from MPs such as Justin Madders and LKP patron Sir Peter […]
National Leasehold Campaign tells Roger Southam to resign from LEASE
UPDATE: Has Roger Southam resigned from Savills? His LinkedIn profile suggest his employment there discontinued at the end of last month. He is now associated with the Eighty Nine Consultancy, which has no website and may be self-employment. The National Leasehold Campaign Facebook group today urged Roger Southam to resign as chairman of the […]
LEASE chair Roger Southam launched complaint to Parliamentary Standards Commissioner against Sir Peter Bottomley and Jim Fitzpatrick (and LKP, naturally enough)
‘Why was I left out?’ asks Sir Ed Davey Roger Southam, the chairman of the Leasehold Advisory Service, issued a complaint to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sir Peter Bottomley and Jim Fitzpatrick He added LKP in the official complaint, in its role as secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group. “I am disappointed not […]
Thanks LKP for raising Grenfell issues. Now we are giving yet more money to LEASE, says housing minister
The housing minister Alok Sharma has thanked LKP for raising Grenfell cladding issues in private apartment blocks. We have intervened in a number of these cases, and will continue to do so. Our intervention at Blenheim Centre / Reflexion on behalf of leaseholders resulted in freeholder Legal and General agreeing to pay the £165,000 a […]
We are dissatisfied with the running of LEASE, APPG chairs tells housing minister
Earlier this afternoon two of the co-chairs of the Leasehold and Commonhold Reform All Party Parliamentary Group made a submission to the backbench business committee for a debate on leasehold and commonhold issues. At approximately 2:47 Sir Peter Bottomley states that he wishes to “place on the record we are dissatisfied with the running of […]
Sector foxes warn that changing leasehold will be ‘dangerous’. But for whom?
The government now understands something that LKP has been saying for years: leasehold is a deeply flawed system. It is also a critical and growing part of the housing market in England and Wales. The Housing White Paper entitled “Fixing our broken housing market” launched in February 2017 made this very clear. This has come […]
