Chair Florence Eshalomi furious that freeholders declined to attend in person, instead relying on a lobbyist
Chris Curtis asked whether freeholders were avoiding the legislative process and instead thwarting it in the courts via judicial review
MPs told ground rents pay for ‘the competence of a professional freeholder’
Freeholders are ‘committed to making sure that people are safe in their homes’. (In fact, they ran off to court to dump remediation costs on leaseholders immediately after Grenfell)
Freeholders say: exclude very rich leaseholders and buy-to-let investors from the £250 ground rent cap
MPs assured freeholders hold managing agents’ ‘feet to the fire’. Apparently, this was not said for humorous effect
To the frustration of the housing select committee – including its chair Florence Eshalomi – freeholders declined to give evidence in person, relying instead on lobbyist and solicitor Charmaine McQueen-Prince.
Several senior executives of the freeholders were in the public gallery, however.
Ms McQueen-Prince addressed the committee on behalf of the Residential Freeholders’ Association and described herself as group counsel for the Wallace Partnership Group, which is headed by Italian hedge funder Count Luca Rinaldo Contardo Padulli, who in addition to income streams from flat owners’ homes owns a chunk of Norfolk, although these details were not relayed to the committee.
Andrew Cooper, Labour MP for Mid Cheshire, asked what her main concerns were about the proposed new Bill. Ms McQueen-Prince gave almost no detail other than to offer the familiar “unintended consequences” concerning the £250 ground rent cap.
Without irony – given the offshore status of many freeholders including RFA members – she claimed the Bill would unfairly help overseas investors and buy-to-letters, and instead proposed the cap be limited to properties in council tax bands A and B. That is properties worth less than £52,000.
Ms McQueen-Prince listed her concerns: “First, the risk of insolvency: if a freeholder becomes insolvent, they will not be able to carry out their obligations … [Building safety] works that are currently being undertaken across the country will come to a halt and leaseholders will be living in dangerous buildings.
“Secondly, pension funds will be impacted by the cap: it will create a transfer of wealth from small and large UK pension funds to buy-to-let investors. That cannot be what the draft Bill seeks to do.
“Thirdly, there will be an impact on investor confidence in UK plc: investors will be unsettled by the retrospective nature of this Bill. These cannot be the Government’s objectives, but they are the unintended consequences.”
Ms McQueen-Prince emphasised “what landlords do behind the scenes”. She added: “At the moment, landlords are entering into and overseeing massive, complex building safety remediation projects.”
Mr Cooper replied: “For which they received over £1 billion in funding under the previous Government — Lord Gove is sitting behind you — and the Building Safety Act requires leaseholders to contribute towards that as well.”
Mr Cooper then returned to ground rents to ask Ms McQueen-Prince what leaseholders received in return for paying them.
“What leaseholders are getting is the competence of a professional freeholder — they are getting their expertise and teams of people who are committed to making sure that people are
safe in their homes.”
This response caused some levity among the committee and audience, and Ms Eshalomi observed that MPs correspondence in-boxes “would say something different”.
Ms McQueen-Prince continued: “I understand that your inboxes will be full of complaints about managing agents and some rogue freeholders. I understand that and I am not denying it is the case.
“We do think that managing agents should be regulated. We often hold managing agents’ feet to the fire about poor performance, their financial management and their operational delivery. That is what freeholders do behind the scenes.
“I want to continue with more about what we do behind the scenes. Again, we are overseeing these massive remediation projects that last six to 18 months. Many landlords are also paying for remediation because the funds do not support fire stopping and compartmentation, and a lot of the buildings that we own have those problems.”
Ms McQueen-Prince did not offer any examples of freeholders doing this, although LKP is aware of forced loans provided by Guernsey-based Abacus Land 4 Limited, part of the Long Harbour fund of William Waldorf Astor, made to the service charge to pay for fire marshals at Heysmoor Heights in Liverpool:
Long Harbour made the loan otherwise the building would have been evacuated. But it is also an example of freeholders saving their compliance backsides with other people’s money, as they have a legal responsibility to keep a block of flats safe, and will be prosecuted if they don’t.
Ms McQueen-Prince continued: “We are also holding developers’ feet to the fire and asking them to come to the table, whatever the size of the building. We are asking them to remediate the buildings that they designed and constructed, whether they be low rise, medium rise or high rise.”
Andrew Lewin, Labour MP for Welwyn Hatfield, asked whether Ms McQueen-Prince was claiming that paying ground rent “is somehow equivalent to paying into a sinking fund that contributes to remedial works”.
Ms McQueen-Prince replied: “No, what we are saying is that there are buildings that, for example, have unsafe external walls, and yes, we are benefiting from Government funding, but those same buildings have fire safety issues internally; they have compartmentation issues.
“Those defects are not covered by the funding. They have to be paid for, and those are the things that we are paying for. We are paying for waking watches of people to guard to buildings.”
Ms McQueen-Prince also claimed that freeholders are having to step in when leaseholders efforts at self-management fail.
“We are attending residents’ meetings. We are also stepping in when Right to Manage companies and RMCs are finding it difficult to manage buildings, because it is pretty tough and that is not what they are trained to do. We are stepping in and taking over management at the request of RTM companies and RMCs.”
Mr Cooper replied that successive governments – “over several Parliaments” – had made manifesto commitments to reform leasehold, so did she accept the government’s clear mandate to do so?
Ms McQueen-Prince replied: “I think that some leaseholders want the Government to pursue these reforms, but the Government have their own evidence of where leaseholders have been quite happy with leasehold, or neutral about it, because they are not really interested in picking up the management.
“What they want to do is come home, live in a safe building and go to work. They are not interested in managing. One important thing is that if we move to commonhold, we are taking away people’s right to live in a building where they do not have management obligations, and there are some people who do not want them. They just want to live in their buildings and make sure they are getting a reasonable service charge and a safe home.”
Ms McQueen-Prince claimed 41% of leasehold properties are privately rented according to the “government’s stats”.
“That means that they are owned by buy-to-let investors, not people living in their own homes. Freeholders, including pension funds and their savers, will see a huge transfer of wealth to buy-to-let investors—very wealthy domestic and overseas leaseholders and property investors.”
In answer to Mr Lewin suggesting that she was perhaps “scaremongering”, Ms McQueen-Prince gave two examples of “winners and losers” in the leasehold reform:
“Example one is expensive flats in London valued at £4 million, Hanover Terrace. The ground rent is £5,000. The ground rent cap will mean that is reduced to £250. The leaseholder who owns that flat will gain £420,000 over the transition period.
“Example two: an RFA [Residential Freehold Association] member holds a 125-year head lease of a trade union building. The ground rent is £12,000 per annum. The ground rent will be capped at £250. The trade union will lose approximately £3.8 million over the life of the lease. That is what this Bill will do.”
Neither example was referenced, and LKP has contacted the RFA to ask whether the second example is actually a residential building at all.
Chris Curtis, Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, had a simple question:
“If the Bill passes in its current form, do you think there would then be a judicial review?”
Ms McQueen-Prince replied: “LAFRA sought to cap enfranchisement premiums. This Bill seeks to cap ground rent. When freeholders purchase buildings subject to long leases with ground rent provisions, they expect those ground rent provisions to be available for the lifetime of the lease, but this Bill is going to stop that.”
She confirmed that the Wallace Partnership Group was going to seek to appeal the judicial review ruling of October.
Mr Curtis added: “It is again notable that, as the Chair started by saying, we have found it difficult to get freeholders to come and sit before us. Why do you think we find that so difficult? To come back to the previous question, do you think it is because these people, rather than dealing with the legislative process from democratically elected Members of Parliament, are instead trying to use the legal system to undermine the decisions made by democratically elected Members of this Parliament?”
This did not receive an answer, although Ms McQueen-Prince, who is a paid lobbyist, did say that she “volunteered to address the committee today”.
Mr Curtis, who in a former career was a pollster, said a YouGov pole found that only one in ten voters opposed the government’s leasehold reforms.
Ms McQueen-Prince conceded that “nobody is interested in ground rent any more” as an investment, and that generally leasehold was toxified.
Her suggestions to improve the Bill were to exclude buy-to-let investors from the £250 ground rent cap, and to exclude “the wealthy and super-rich living in really expensive properties”.
A ground rent cap could apply to very low value properties in council tax bands A and B.
Sarah Smith, the Labour MP for Hyndburn said “as a leaseholder who is involved in a propety where we also have to oversee the managing agent ourselves … There is zero service [from the freeholder] being provided to me and, no doubt, to many people sitting in the Public Gallery.
“It is rare that we have this many people turn up to a hearing, but there are many members of the public in attendance today because the level of frustration with the operation of the current system is so palpable.
“Please do explain how I, and no doubt many others, am missing out on this magical service we can receive from our freeholders?”
The list of MPs in the committee is here:
The full transcript of the hearing is here:
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/17254/pdf
The hearing can be watched via Parliament TV here:
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/2f75f9bc-507f-4f80-bf7f-48b3483e2d77
Related posts:
Anonymous freeholders are the reliable long-term custodians of blocks of flats, Select Committee is told
MPs furious that freeholders won’t turn up to defend their ‘professional landlordism’, but send a paid lobbyist instead
Grenfell cladding crisis prompts the question: what are freeholders actually for?
Self-interested freeholders and property managers chorus: ‘taxpayer must pay over cladding’ … which, as it happens, leaves their income streams untouched
Communities Select Committee reject the lobbying nonsense of the freeholders’ good behaviour ‘pledge’
MPs furious that freeholders won’t turn up to defend their ‘professional landlordism’, but send a paid lobbyist instead
My relocation of Charmaine’s concern about leaseholders interests is a little different. At a previous employer she acted as solicitor where she tried to persuade the tribunal to overturn their decision to allow the s24 appointed manager to collect the ground rent for a fee of 10% of the £46K collected in ground rent per year.. A dispute about a fee of just £4,600 a year. Maybe there was another reason it was worth spending Charmaine’s time trying to get the Tribunal to change its mind in three separate applications including sending her along to a hearing. The tribunal didn’t change their minds as they took a different view of leaseholders interests than the one Charmaine proposed.
I continue to be astonished by the freeloaders lobbyist and Legal representatives claims.
“MPs assured that freeholders are holding property managing agents accountable, and it seems this comment was made seriously” not as a joke.
I have not come acoss a more absurd claim since the freeloaders were unsuccessful in their attempt at a judical review.
The freeloaders have demonstrated a blatant disregard for our democratically elected Members of Parliament by refusing to appear in person and face scrutiny and instead deployed Lawfare.
I respectfully ask the freeholder of our home to investigate the following and respond directly on the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership forum.
Who, in their right mind would employ the following individual?
“REBBA TAYLOR FOR MAILONLINE” reported on “17th August 2017” the following:
“Married love rat who claimed to be an SAS hero to scam £30,000 out of women he met on “Match.com” is jailed for four years after he was busted by “Walter Mitty” site exposing fake soldiers. That comprehensive quality article runs for several pages. His name is Ian Reynolds – and lives in Blackpool and the article can be easily found by “Google”.
Following a request from a neighbour to carry out informal due diligence for alleged sub standard work, I came across the above and reported it to the property managing agent (Home Managment Group Limited) who have not, at the time writing, have not acknowledged receipt of my email which was sent on behalf of many concerned friends and neighbours.
We settled an invoice to the above named for £11,500 last year for roofing works and have since had water ingress in new areas of our home including unoccupied apartments and communal areas. We have no idea what it will cost to have this sub standard work put right. We are all aged over 60 and can do without this avoidable nonsense and pay a property managing agents to deal we these issues.
Just for the record, a recent fire risk assessment confirms that the managing agent has failed to adequately vet contractors prior to engaing their services and makes valid structured recommendations to do so.
We would respectfully ask the freeholder to “Sprint Into Action” and hold our part time property managing agents accountable – and “hold their feet to the fire”.
We look forward to your detailed reply
Re ‘Feet to the Fire’
I own a flat in a residential block. My original developer/ landlord sold its controlling interest to E&J Estates which immediately appointed the often incompetent and much criticised RMG as its managing agent.
The March quarter day is 9 days away and I have yet to receive a service charge billing. The accounts to 31/3/25 were provided in only draft form in 2025. I queried the numbers with RMG on 3/10/25 and have yet to receive an acknowledgement let alone any justification for them despite receiving a ‘deficit’ billing of £263 payable on the December quarter day
On those occasions over the years when I’ve challenged E&J in respect of its Landlord obligations there has been no response other than ‘refer to RMG’.
The notion that some uniformed and irrelevant lobbyist purports to know what is going on while bugling Landlords’ interests is ridiculous
The biggest rip off is through Service Charges/Buildings insurance
When you have a £40k lease extension let us know if you still hold the same views.