Fleecehold: The play. Back on stage in Camden August 22-24

A ‘rollicking juggernaut of a show’ about three women taking on the establishment to help millions of leaseholders

“Fleecehold”, the play charting how three extraordinary women from the North-West helped break the rip-off leasehold form of land tenure in residential property, is back on stage as part of the Camden Fringe festival in north London.

The play, by author Michele Sheldon, is to be performed at the Cockpit Theatre at 7pm on August 22 to August 24.

Full details from Michele on 07951 602260 or email sheldonmichele@rocketmail.com

The play tells how the three founders of the National Leasehold Campaign, Katie Kendrick, Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire, all unwittingly bought leasehold houses from plc housebuilders that had sneaky, revenue generating clauses in the leases.

The freeholds were then sold on to wealthy anonymous private equity punters, often offshore, who were happy to hitch a ride on the home owning aspirations of ordinary families via funds funds like William Waldorf Astor’s Long Harbour.

Britain’s ever-concentrating cartel of housebuilders, who are generously subsidised by taxpayers, happily ripped off their own customers, the vast majority of whom bought with the Help to Buy scheme. So, the rest of us were shafted as well.

The play tells how Katie, a nurse, is furious the developer has sold the freehold to her home to a viscount who owns 200,000 freeholds and now wants her to pay nearly £14,000 to buy hers back.

Despite being mute as a child and badly bullied because of a bad stammer, Katie decides she must speak out.

She is soon joined by fellow leaseholders Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire, who take inspiration from leasehold campaigners Sebastian O’ Kelly, Louie Burns and the ghost of 19th century leasehold reformer MP Henry Broadhurst.

They set up the National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) on a Facebook page. Meanwhile, the ghosts of greedy landowners and aristocrats hinder and pour scorn on their attempts at reform alongside modern day freeholders and developers.

The play includes select committee inquiry evidence to document the leasehold reformers’ journey up to helping draft the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023, making its way through Parliament in spite of being watered down due to lobbying. [The Conservative government running out of life also meant clauses from the Bill – such as what to do about existing ground rents – were also dropped.]

Over hundreds of years other leasehold reformers have been laughed at and ignored, yet the play highlights how the NLC’s tenacity, perseverance and the use of social media helped to garner support and push for reform, in spite of hard lobbying by freehold investors and landowners.

Fleecehold stars Lucille Ferguson as Katie Kendrick, Sasha Ravenscroft as Jo Darbyshire and Debbie Christie as Cath Williams. Supporting actors include comedy actor James Holmes, best known as Clive in popular BBC sitcom Miranda, Alex Halsall and Tristan Pretty.

Fleecehold is on at The Cockpit from 22 to 24 August at 7pm as part of the Camden Fringe.

Michele Sheldon wrote the play out of frustration of being a leaseholder and as a tribute to all the reformers, including Louie Burns, who died in 2020, as well as for all leaseholders trapped in their houses and flats. After a sellout run at the Camden Fringe last year, Michele has rewritten parts of the play to reflect audience feedback.

Michele said:

“Every day we hear stories in the news of how this feudal system brings mental health and financial misery and ruin to leaseholders. Freeholders and their managing agents treat an estimated five million leaseholders living in flats, shared ownership, retirement housing, housing estates and those trapped in the cladding scandal as cash cows. The sheer numbers of people suffering in England and Wales shows leasehold isn’t fit for purpose and must be replaced with commonhold in line with every other country in the world.”