“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 the institution’s inherent trustworthiness.” – Lawrence Lessig.
Anthony Essien Chief Executive of LEASE since 2007
Over the years LKP has exposed many problems with LEASE, including the following:
- In 2010 LKP showed that LEASE was promoting the benefits of buying ground rents by investors to the detriment of leaseholders. Taxpayer-hosted seminars explained that for a minimal investment one could obtain control of the building as well as a number of additional income streams such as 100% mark-up insurance commissions.
- LKP showed that LEASE was selling training to landlords to help them prepare their cases against their leaseholders at the tribunal.
- LKP showed that LEASE was selling training to landlords helping them to present their evidence against their leaseholders at the Tribunal.
- LKP showed that LEASE’s website included advertisements for contentious services providers in the sector, including one who they knew had been found no longer fit to hold a judicial office by the Ministry of Justice.
- LKP showed that LEASE have been happy to train some of the most oppressive landlords in the sector.
- LKP exposed the fact that LEASE continues not to report or expose poor practices in the sector to government officials.
- LKP exposed the fact that LEASE continues not to highlight defects in leasehold legislation.
- LEASE claim they are not permitted to report poor practice or highlight defects in legislation due to their remit despite the fact that they were told by officials this was not the case as long ago as 2014.
- LKP has shown that LEASE has on occasions opposed legislation changes designed to help leaseholders.
- LKP has shown that, in the government’s unfair lease terms consultation, LEASE enthusiastically supported many smaller changes, but were somehow less forceful on larger and more important issues such as supporting the banning of ground rents on new build homes.
- LKP exposed the fact that both the two most recent Chairs of LEASE were totally inappropriate for the role. Their combined tenure covered more than a decade.
- LKP has highlighted the fact that there has been no leaseholder representation on the board of LEASE for many years.
- LKP exposed the annual LEASE conference as a trade show and forced LEASE to make at least some effort to run a leaseholder event. That leaseholder event has now been canceled.
- LKP has exposed the fact that LEASE overstates the number of customers that contact them and the level of service they provide to them.
- LKP has exposed the fact that LEASE sometimes provides poor or very poor advice to leaseholders.
- LKP has shown that LEASE has sometimes offered the wrong advice to leaseholders, on key issues.
- LEASE have chosen not to provide any constructive support in any of the work that LKP and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Leasehold and Commonhold Reform (APPG) have been involved in to promote an improvement in the legislation. At best, they have been reluctant attendees at the APPG as one of their emails accidentally made clear. They have on a number of occasions sought to undermine LKP and the APPG.
Each time LKP highlights a failing by LEASE the issues raised seem to be quietly swept under the carpet by a succession of officials.
The government continues to offer its full support to LEASE as its monopoly-funded and supported provider of leaseholder help. Like a washing powder, each iteration of LEASE has become supposedly improved and yet remains ineffectual.
In 2017, having spent more than 15 years actively selling better services to landlords and managing agents than they were offering to leaseholders, LEASE’s role changed overnight and in February 2017 they suddenly became “wholly on the side of the leaseholder”, according to the then Housing Minister Gavin Barwell.
The same management that had been so happy to provide an advantage to the supply side of the sector now supposedly existed only for the benefit of leaseholders. Despite this, a year after this supposed Damascene conversion, LEASE’s chief executive was happy to explain, at the annual Institute of Residential Property Management conference, the range of improved services he had been hoping to provide to managing agents and landlords before the government told him to stop.
LKP’s thanks for exposing LEASE’s many failings over the years has been negative.
LKP has been sent to Coventry by officials on occasion and even been sat on the naughty seat in meetings with Ministers and not allowed to speak. In 2014 LEASE made a major effort to discredit LKP with a new rotation of incoming senior officials at the then DCLG. We have seen no evidence that this culture has changed.
Most recently LEASE has been provided with an additional £465,000 to help leaseholders faced with cladding problems.
We warned government from the outset that this would not help. We are now told by leaseholders living on various cladding sites that LEASE have offered little help other than to read the lease and provide them with the contact details of the National Pro Bono Centre.
After a year, LEASE has not been involved in helping to resolve a single cladding site case. They didn’t even attend the leaseholder cladding forum recently held in Parliament – the only meeting so far where flat owners faced with the trauma of Grenfell cladding have actually assembled.
When LEASE was originally created by Lord Young he intended it as a short-term measure to help the whole market understand the 1993 Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act. The organisation soon transformed and, although the 1996 Act that funds LEASE refers to the government supporting “any” group, the officials have treated LEASE as their monopoly supplier ever since.
The influence of LEASE has since become entirely toxic to any other organisation that strives to support leaseholders. Many on the supply side of the sector warmly welcome LEASE. Its passive and “impartial” approach has contributed to an environment where poor practice has been able to flourish.
As a result of the government’s position, other than LKP, there has been no other group willing to argue for leaseholder issues and against LEASE’s negative influence.
The Federation of Private Residents Associations (FPRA) is there to support residents’ associations but their content sits behind a paywall. AgeUK had to give up on providing leaseholder support many years ago; Citizens’ Advice Bureau support is random and limited.
LEASE’s institutional corruption has shown itself in many guises over the years. Sir Peter Bottomley has been particularly outspoken about the LEASE conference which ran until 2017.
“Their idea of raising money commercially was to run a conference where lawyers, accountants, surveyors and freeholders came together to swap ideas on how to put one over on the leaseholders. Only when the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership charity started pushing did some of the leaseholders get invited to a little bunfight afterwards. The trustees of LKP were not invited to the conferences, but some of them decided to go anyway. That is a crazy way of dealing with things. When I raised that with Deep Sagar and similar issues with Roger Southam— the present LEASE chairman, who I doubt will be chairman for very long—they did not respond in a way that I regard as proper.”
LEASE Cheif Executive, Anthony Essien, and LEASE Chair, Deep Sagar, wrote to DCLG with a list of 44 supposedly “inaccurate and unjustified” statements about LEASE which they claimed appeared on the LKP website. This list was a jumbled mess with no references to specific articles supplied.
At the time DCLG asked: “I would also request that you treat the content of the attached document [the list of 44 complaints] and your subsequent reply as ‘not for publication’ in the spirit of trying to move forward more positively.”
LKP was happy to comply with this request and spent a week checking the site and providing evidence that 42 of the 44 supposed “inaccurate and unjustified” statements about LEASE were actually entirely justified, and that the 2 remaining comments did not even appear on the LKP website, in any article.
Neither DCLG nor LEASE subsequently disputed any LKP’s evidence. It was agreed by all parties that it would best to move forward positively and for LKP not to complain about LEASE having made these false accusations. LEASE CEO, Anthony Essien, confirmed: “We are also happy to move forward and concentrate on the substantive issues in the sector.”
Sadly LEASE never engaged positively with LKP, however LKP went on to work with DCLG officials on a number of important issues, including helping them to produce the first accurate government estimate of the number of leasehold homes, and the beginnings of the move towards what has become the review of commonhold and much of existing leasehold legislation
Shortly after Secretary of State Sajid Javid made the huge announcement that he planned to crack down on leasehold abuse with “radical” proposals, LEASE came forward with an argument against the Secretary of State.
They talked about the fact that: “The elephant is the investment sale of ground rent provides additional income for the developer to make schemes viable in a lot of cases. There is the rhetoric of profiteering and finger pointing but somewhere along the way we need to have an objective conversation about the whole development cycle and how it works in all facets to ensure that the right decisions are being made for the right reason”
The Secretary of State’s officials were then contacted by LKP to point out that their “wholly on the side of the leaseholder” funded body should perhaps not be so quickly seeking to argue against the Secretary of State. This is especially true since LEASE’s argument advocates the same arguments now being put forward by the developer’s lobby, in order to oppose change.
LEASE’s article quickly disappeared from their website and was replaced with a 404 error message
However, LEASE staff then quietly re-released the same article again under a different web page, which is quite extraordinary.
The July 2017 LEASE board minutes record that LEASE Chair, Roger Southam, had filed a formal complaint with the Parliamentary Standards office against APPG co-Chairs Sir Peter Bottomley MP and Jim Fitzpatrick MP and against LKP as APPG secretariat. Neither Chief Executive, Anthony Essien, or Chair, Roger Southam, had the courtesy to advise either LKP or the co-Chairs of the nature of this complaint, which did not appear on the LEASE website until many months later. Currently, the LEASE board minutes still fail to record that this complaint was dismissed by the Parliamentary Standards office who felt there was no merit in even opening an investigation. No apologies have been received by any of the parties.
This brings us back to the criteria for institutional corruption.
“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 the institution’s inherent trustworthiness.” – Lawrence Lessig.
The government cannot allow this situation to continue and must take action.
Related posts:
Housing minister says LEASE must be on the side of leaseholders, and promises more money 
Motion of no confidence in Roger Southam as LEASE chair 
Not the job of LEASE to warn ministers of leasehold houses scandal, Roger Southam tells BBC 
Will more funding for LEASE just be: Carry on minister! 
Justin Madders MP demands LEASE chair has ‘no business interests in the leasehold sector’
Money politics at its worst. I cannot believe this is still being funded by the taxpayer.
Truly appalling that this tax payer funded organisation has done nothing to protect leaseholders, yet LKP without the same financial benefits have been instrumental in raising awareness and fighting for leaseholders. Surely it’s time to make LKP the tax payer funded leasehold organisation of choice? Things would change overnight and the wonderful guys that run LKP can get the resources they need to do even more. I would be more than willing to be the leaseholder representation on the Board. I’ve spent the last 18 months learning more about Leasehold tenure and the way that the system is so biased in favour of freeholders. Change is needed urgently and LKP should be given the funding they need and deserve.
chas says
July 29, 2018 at 5:09 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Jo,
This has been going on as long as I am aware since the government failed to properly fund LEASE allowing them to market the Landlord & Freeholder. It is appalling that this QUANGO a tax payer funded organisation did very little to protect leaseholders.
Landlords & Freeholders then realised they could influence the members in charge and instead help those who kept funding, who had a different agender.
LKP have been brilliant and yet receive no funding from government because they fight for the Leasehold Tenant. Some MPs and family’s are Landlords, why should they give up lucrative and profitable life style by changing their way of life.
LKP without the financial benefits of LEASE have been instrumental in raising awareness and fighting for leaseholders. It is time to make LKP the tax payer funded leasehold organisation of choice, things then could change, but not over night.
I also would be more than willing to be a leaseholder representative. I have spent 10 years helping to prevent Firstport Retirement was Peverel Retirement from charging residents for Service Charges they did not have to pay, check out Peverel Action website which closed down allowing CARLEX and LKP to rise from the ashes.
Change is needed urgently and LKP should be given the funding they need and deserve, but do not rely on Senior Cabinet Or Housing Ministers to provide the help that is needed, until it was accepted that they could benefit.
“This has been going on as long as I am aware since the government failed to properly fund LEASE allowing them to market the Landlord & Freeholder.”
Chas, interesting. Is this the reason (lack of government funding) LEASE effectively went rogue and became an agent for landlords?
David,
I am afraid its a fib promoted by LEASE that they only helped landlords and freeholders because “they were not properly funded” They had been actively selling services to the supply side of the sector for more than a decade.
They were being encouraged to obtain more funding from the private sector in more recent years but it was always LEASE’s choice that they felt they wanted to obtain that income from selling more and more services to the supply side of the sector. That is until Gavin Barwell said STOP.
The truth is LEASE’s resources have continued to grow over the years but they always wanted more and more.
.
Readers can do run their own simple LEASE credibility test. Since the potentially most important thing that any group of leaseholders can do is form recognised tenants association you would expect LEASE to provide lots of useful information?
Have a look for “RTA” on the LEASe web site. This is the main result returned:
“A tenants’ association is a group of tenants (normally leaseholders) who
hold houses or flats on leases/tenancies from the same landlord on
similar terms. A Recognised Tenants’ Association is one where the
members have come together to represent their common interests so that
the association can act on the tenants’ behalf, and which has been
recognised for the purposes of section 29 of the Landlord and Tenant Act
1985. An association is recognised either by notice in writing from the
landlord to the secretary of the association, or by application to a
First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).”
It is difficult to see how you could make that advice and more anodyne.
One of the links about RTA’s takes you to the LEASE submission on the 2017 DCLG consultation on making it easier to form an RTA. Yes, of course, LEASE got some of things wrong and yes their submission proposed ways to make it harder.
Thanks for the clarification, Martin. LEASE were not driven into the arms of the leasehold industry, they drove themselves. That makes sense to me.
David – it is more likely they chose the best way to make money to raise the profile of those in charge.
You say interesting, is this the reason (lack of government funding) LEASE effectively went rogue and became an agent for landlords?
I believe this – having attempted to use LEASE many-many years ago.
Martin has his views and uses fib, should it not be lie.
Chas,
You contradict yourself, first you appear to agree with Martin – in your first paragraph, then you suggest LEASE only went rogue due to lack of government funding.
Whatever, there is an extremely important campaign going on to rid England and Wales of our obscene leasehold laws. Internecine warfare distracts from this wholly worthy goal, egos should be dampened down.
I haven’t the depth of knowledge of either you or Martin about LEASE, indeed of leasehold itself. My instincts tell me, however, that LEASE is like many other similar bodies – quangos and professional/trade organisations, and ombudsmen. They are self serving, and worst still they have an affinity with one side and regard joe public as a nuisance.
There is a long established order of things which benefits those with power and money, LEASE, and others, have as much interest in maintaining this established order as those with the power and money they are above all things, lackeys. LEASE are not impartial, nor disinterested. Why in God’s name are they at this very moment making representations in defence of leasehold laws?
Hardly “warfare”, lets call it unnecessary and a distraction..
Jo,
We need LKP as the replacement for LEASE and remove all the old guard from the LVT now FTT and bring in new blood..
Our friend Norman Greed can explain the way he was treated at the LVT after being informed he had a case by the Chairman.
Drain this swamp.
Thank you to LKP for this comprehensive and thorough expose of LEASE.
Surely this hard hitting but accurate account is more than enough evidence for LEASE to be disbanded or at least investigated by government officials?
Leaseholders deserve so much better and by continuing to support LEASE both financially and strategically, government are laughing in the faces of ordinary folk just trying to own their own homes.
Disgusting
When I had problems with my managing agents and their constant flouting of my Lease requirements I was advised to call Lease as they would be the body to help and support leaseholders .
Great I thought someone to offer some wisdom. How wrong was I , i came away thinking they were working for my Managing agents and Freeholders .
YES, absolutely corrupt.
Appalled with the poor misleading advice I got from LEASE. I have ended up trapped in a leasehold Redrow home and I can’t even buy a true freehold. I can’t afford to enfranchise so I’m truly stuck! LEASE could have and should have advised me correctly.
LKP have helped me more for FREE than LEASE. Time to shut LEASE down as the corruption is endemic and use the funds for LKP!
LEASE is institutionally corrupt is strong language and a charge LEASE must answer.
Could be another job for the Select Committee to investigate.
LEASE needs a leadership which actively supports ordinary homeowners not vested interests
It is not surprising that some regard LEASE as a corrupted organisation, as it advises upon and promotes a Leasehold system which in itself easily leads to corruption when dishonest and ruthless operators use it to their advantage.
But there are many others who are to blame, what about the Government who finances them, and after eight years in power and around nine different Housing Ministers have only just begun taking an interest in reform and still continue to finance LEASE.
And there are the Trade organisations like ARHM and ARMA who although they promote good practise, do very little to enforce it, and are prepared to entertain having some less reputable companies as members. Organisations like these rely on Leasehold and the membership fees of the companies who operate it for their existance, so it is not surprising they only pay lip service for major reform.
Serious campaigning has for many years been left to LKP(formally Carlex) its supporters and a few brave MPs. And in the last two years the formation of NLC has given the campaign a tremendous boost.
Now is the time for the Government to recognise there have been eight wasted years and get behind LKP and NLC.
Either divert to them some of funding they give to LEASE or bring together LEASE, LKP and NLC under one umbrella to act and advise on reform in a real and meanable way.
@Michael Hollands is correct in identifying the so many changes in housing ministers over a period of time that is not providing any consistency. Lately, due to Brexit and the mess with constant resignations, ministers are not in positions any length of time to see the job through. This period of political instability only goes to strengthen the ancient leasehold tenure laws. Secretary of State Sajid Javid was seemingly making all the right noises. Despite that he never said much about existing leaseholders ground rents being set low…only the newest and subsequent leasehold houses and flats for the future We are heading for a two tier system of leasehold UNLESS all ground rents are set to zero to stop the monetisation of hard working citizens.
But there is a lot of old money, the big London estates, inherited through some dalliance with royalty 500 years ago, new money as in ground rent speculators – all strongly opposed with some influential clout.
“Each time LKP highlights a failing by LEASE the issues raised seem to be quietly swept under the carpet by a succession of officials”.
“The government continues to offer its full support to LEASE as its monopoly-funded and supported provider of leaseholder help”.
“LKP has been sent to Coventry by officials on occasion and even been sat on the naughty seat in meetings with Ministers and not allowed to speak”.
The very honourable Crispin Blunt spoke of, ““Present-day “onerous ground rents” are, more likely than not, the resultant of UNCONSCIONABLE conduct carried out by one sector of society who have superior information flow (developers, freeholders’ funds, financiers, solicitors) at the expense of an unsuspecting and more naive part of society (consumer homebuyers)”.
LKP, you have been bold in asking the question, is LEASE corrupt? But not bold enough. The DCLG, and government itself, have allowed LEASE to (corruptly) function. And government has allowed “one sector of society” – from Crispin Blunt’s statement above – to impose its obscene practises on ordinary people seeking home ownership. Even now government, talks of REFORM, and not ABOLITION of our leasehold laws.
Shame the devil, and say it as it is, the entire system is corrupt – government, civil service, judiciary, and all else involved with leasehold.