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You are here: Home / News / Forfeiture / Leasehold forfeiture: why is LEASE so pathetic over this, too?

Leasehold forfeiture: why is LEASE so pathetic over this, too?

June 1, 2013 By admin

LEASEConferenceslogoLEASE is also under attack for failing to address the issue of leasehold forfeiture.

LEASE happily tells freehold owners how to forfeit a lease, but does not tell leaseholders how to preserve their home.

Nigel Wilkins, of the Campaign Against Residential Leasehold, who has been urging that forfeiture be ended, has written to LEASE chief executive Anthony Essien demanding action.

“Since this is such a serious and frightening issue for leaseholders, I really think it is well beyond the time that LEASE provided a legal opinion for leaseholders on how to tackle it.

“You provide full information to landlords about how to forfeit leaseholders’ homes so it is incumbent on you to provide full information to leaseholders about how to combat it.  In fact it is highly questionable whether the legislation that permits forfeiture complies with the Human Rights Act or common law.”

Wilkins quotes the cases of ‘Regina v Waya’, the prosecution of a mortgage fraudster where it was ruled that the guilty party only had to forfeit that portion of the capital gain from the property directly attributable to the mortgage fraudulently obtained – and not that part of the capital gain relating to the part of the purchase price that was legitimately funded.

The ruling states: “The legislative purpose of a confiscation order was to deprive a criminal of the proceeds of his crime and not to act as a deterrent by imposing a further punishment.

“Therefore confiscation order should not be disproportionate to the benefit that a criminal derived from his criminal activity.”

As Wilkins points out: “So leaseholders are being treated far worse than criminals when it comes to forfeiture.  Moreover any debts due are purely civil debts, and not a result of theft.

“As we all know a large proportion of the “debts” owed by leaseholders arise because of theft and incompetence by landlords, managing agents and others – the so-called “professionals”.”

Curiously, forfeiture as an issue was considered by new ARMA-Q regulator Keith Hill, when he was housing minister. He admits “kicking it into the long grass” by referring forfeiture to the Law Commission.

Forfeiture is very nasty and an anomaly. As readers of LKP know, Battersea leasehold owner Dennis Jackson came within a hair’s breadth of forfeiting the lease on his £800,000 flat at Plantation Wharf.

During the Wandsworth County Court case to lift the forfeiture order Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd, of LKP, were ordered from the court after the freeholder’s barrister objected to their presence.

This meant that Jackson’s entire wealth could have been taken from him in a secret court.

Why is this not a national scandal?

CARL can be contacted here: http://www.carl.org.uk

Related posts:

Plantation Wharf leasehold pensioner has forfeiture order on his £800,000 flat Leasehold pensioner reprieved from forfeiture … but the legal bill is £76,000 and rising Sunday Times reports the forfeiture scandal of Dennis Jackson at Plantation Wharf Fury at ‘life-shattering’ forfeiture case held in a secret court LEASE: Find some backbone, or face the chop!

Filed Under: Forfeiture, Home Middle Right, LEASE Tagged With: Anthony Essien, Campaign Against Residential Leasehold, CARL, Dennis Jackson, forfeiture, Keith Hill, LEASE, Leasehold Advisory Service, Nigel Wilkins, Plantation Wharf, Regina v Waya, Wandsworth County Court

Everything important

Abacus Land 4 Limited Adriatic Land AgeUK Alexander Bastin Alex Ellison Alok Sharma Amanda Gourlay Anchor Andrew Selous MP Anthony Essien APPG ARCO ARHM ARMA ARMA-Q Baroness Gardner Barratt BBC R4 You and Yours Bellway Benjamin Mire Beth Rudolf Blythe Court Bob Bessell Bob Smytherman Bovis Homes Brandon Lewis British Property Federation Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation Campaign for Housing in Later Life Canary Riverside CARL Cath Williams CentreForum Chainbow Charter Quay Cherry Jones Churchill Retirement Living Circle Residential Management Limited Cirrus Citiscape Clive Betts MP CMA Commonhold Competition and Markets Authority Conveyancing Association Countryside Properties plc Countrywide Countrywide Estate Management Court of Appeal Cypress Place Daily Mail David Glass DCLG Deep Sagar Dennis Jackson Dudley Joiner E&J Capital Partners Ed Davey Elim Court Eric Pickles Estates and Management Esther Rantzen exit fees Federation of Private Residents Associations Financial Times FirstPort Flood Re forfeiture FPRA Galliard Gary Murphy Gavin Barwell George Osborne Glyn Jackson Grant Shapps Grenfell cladding ground rent ground rents Ground Rents Income Fund plc Help To Buy Heysmoor Heights Homeground Management Limited HomeOwners Alliance House of Lords IRPM Israel Moskovitz James Brokenshire MP James Driscoll James Tuttiett James Wyatt Janet Entwistle Janice Northover JB Leitch Jeffrey Fairburn Jim Fitzpatrick Jim Fitzpatrick MP Joanne Darbyshire John Christodoulou John Fenwick Joseph Gurvits Justin Bates Justin Madders MP Justin Tomlinson Katie Kendrick Keith Hill Laceys Lakeside Law Commision Law Commission LEASE Leasehold Advisory Service leasehold houses Leasehold Solutions Lendlease London Assembly Long Harbour Lord Best Louie Burns Mainstay Margaret Anne Kirmond Mari Knowles Mark Prisk Martin Boyd Martin Paine McCarthy and Stone Mercia Investment Properties Limited Mere Court Michelle Banks Mulberry Mews Mundy National Leasehold Campaign New Capital Quay NHBC Nigel Bannister Nigel Glen Nigel Wilkins Oakland Court OFT Parthenia Patrick Collinson Paula Higgins Persimmon Pete Redfern Peverel Philip Rainey QC Phillip Rainey QC Plantation Wharf Private Eye Professor Nicholas Hopkins Prostitutes Redrow Regent Court Rendall and Rittner Retirement Retirement Security Limited RICS right to manage Right To Manage Federation Rob Plumb Roger Southam RTM RTMF Sajid Javid Sally Keeble Sebastian O’Kelly SFO Shula Rich Simon van Houten Siobhan McGrath Sir Ed Davey Sir Peter Bottomley Sonia McColl OBE Southwark Steve Morgan Sunday Times Susan Wood Tanfield Chambers Taylor Wimpey Tchenguiz Tchenguiz Family Trust Team The Daily Telegraph The Guardian The Sunday Times The Times Triplerose Trust Property Management Vallea Court Vincent Tchenguiz West India Quay Will Astor William Waldorf Astor Y and Y Management Yianis Group You and Yours

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LKPhelp2The leasehold game is weighted against ordinary home-owning leaseholders, who aren’t professional players. LKP was set up to redress the balance, to help you win your disputes or at least avoid disasters.

If you have a leasehold problem, you can email sok@leaseholdknowledge or take a chance on calling 07808 328 230.

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Comments

  1. Paul says

    June 7, 2013 at 3:02 pm

    Yes, that is just one example of how unfair forfeiture — Dennis Jackson could have had his £800,000
    flat taken from him because he was said to have owed under a quarter of what his flat is worth.
    Where would you see this being practiced outside of leasehold?

    On a repression, they will sell the property and only the amount owing plus legal fees will be deducted,
    why has forfeiture not been banned it is worse than illegal lone sharks?!

  2. LHA says

    June 18, 2013 at 2:40 pm

    The simple answer is
    1 don’t breach your lease eg let or alter without consent
    2 pay if billed and query ( in a recordabel way, if you have a question
    3 where you disagree, learn and exercise your rights rather than let a LL inititate proceedings.
    All of which LEASE will and do help individuals with, they are not the business of creating a “whiners charter” and clearly explain the process and rights in their website.

    Far too often legitimate concerns are undermined and opportunities missed by flat owners relying on common sense ( and often entirely made up) assertions of what they think their rights are or what they think they should be, and not what they actually are.

  3. admin says

    June 18, 2013 at 3:20 pm

    LHA: With all due respect, forfeiture is an absurdity and wrong. It should be ended as a means to resolve leasehold disputes. Repossession is reasonable: the debts owed and established in court are paid; the monies remaining (if any) go to the leaseholder.

    ARMA, ALEP and virtually every lawyer I have spoken to regards forfeiture as wrong. (I and Martin Boyd were thrown out of Wandsworth County Court when the lifting of a forfeiture order was heard: so Dennis Jackson faced losing his £800,000 flat in secret. I was thrown out as “press” and Boyd was Jackson’s lay advisor. I have yet to encounter an informed opinion that is not astonished by this.)

    Some leaseholders are falling into forfeiture unwittingly: heirs to retirement leasehold flats, for example. Others, like Jackson are so broken by their LVT experiences, that they stick their heads in the sand and give up. Had he not – indirectly – got in touch with LKP, he would have certainly lost his flat.

    In the event, it was saved and his ill-fated defiance over £7,500 in service charges will cost him about £200,000.

  4. LHA says

    June 24, 2013 at 9:36 am

    I did respond to this but it seems to have been “declined” or is awaiting moderation?

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