Peter Bottomley: Many thanks

‘To have the support and respect of Sir Peter Bottomley has been one of the proudest achievements of LKP’

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Swept away in the disaster for the Conservatives of the general election last week was Sir Peter Bottomley, the former MP for Worthing West, ex-Father of the House, ex-co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform and certainly not the “ex” patron of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership – a post he can have for as long as he wants it.

It is a position that he shares with Labour MP Justin Madders, now a minister in the Department of Business, and Sir Ed Davey, the leader of the now 72 LibDems in the Commons.

So, the chessboard has been cleared and new pieces laid out, with leaseholders left wondering when the long promised leasehold reforms will be completed: particularly the cap on ground rents, the ending of lease forfeiture and the revival of commonhold.

Then there are all the secondary legislation measures of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act passed just before Parliament was disolved in May. That would include pro forma, immediately comparable service charge demands and the equality of arms in leasehold litigation – ending the unfairness of legal costs, which so favour landlords.

Leaseholders have every reason to mourn the departure of Sir Peter Bottomley, although it is our hope that he won’t be absent from Westminster for very long.

In the years that Martin Boyd and myself have been running LKP, Peter has always been the third man (with former Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick, for many years, our fourth).

When we set up the LKP website in January 2012, I had no idea how effective it would be, or how interested the rest of the world would be in a kind of micro journalism project devoted to exposing the leasehold sector in all its grisly detail.

This was a time when just about everyone – from housing minister Grant Shapps, to civil servants, to the egregious Leasehold Advisory Service, let alone the galere of leasehold “professionals” making money out of flat owners – were agreed that the leasehold system was working well for the not quite three million or so leaseholders. This was before Martin demonstrated that this figure, happily used by government (which had one solitary official dedicated to the sector) was about two million out.

In the first few months we made progress with questions in the Lords – thanks to the late Baroness Gardener – and met with the London Assembly. We had even attended – after some pressure – the LEASE annual conference: in those days a lavish beanfeast for landlords and their minions taking place at a Mayfair hotel at a cost of £450 a head. This meant that taxpayers were helping to train landlords to make money out of leaseholders – the precise opposite of the quango’s purported purpose.

Then in June 2012 we ran an article about the retirement site Oakland Court in Worthing, where leaseholders had just won a £135,000 against their pension fund freeholder in spite of legal game-playing to frustrate the process.

Stop this ‘legal torture’ of pensioners, says MP

Peter decided to comment on our website, saying that the case amounted to “legal torture” and he condemned the entire LVT process, referring to “the series of actions and expensive stratagems faced by elderly frail constituents without the financial resources to play unending tribunal games with a relentless money grabbing opponent”.

And so began a relationship that has carried on for more than 14 years.

As LKP’s readership grew – and Martin made headway lobbying MPs, ministers, officials, Law Commission, FCA, OFT, CMA etc etc – so did the controversies, and Peter was involved in all of them.

There were the countless veiled threats of defamation – from housebuilders, freeholders, property managers and assorted scamps – with the one aim of shutting us up.

Some of these were quite a white-knuckled ride, but in all of them Peter had our back, prepared to ask questions in the House and name names of particularly egregious characters.

These were the sort of bullying cheats used to easy victories in the leasehold tribunals, but when it came to defamation it would have dawned on even the dimmest that the legal actions were going to be very public and very noisy. Particularly noisy, after LKP became the secretariat of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold reform as well as a registered charity.

This gives a flavour of a classic Bottomley intervention from 2014:

Tchenguiz PR man detonates Bottomley eruption during Queen’s Speech debate

To have the support and respect of Sir Peter Bottomley has been one of the proudest achievements of LKP.

As about the most non-partisan MP in the whole of Westminster, Peter was widely respected in all the political parties, which meant that the likes of Jim Fitzpatrick, Justin Madders, Sir Ed Davey and all the other MPs and peers in the 200-strong APPG had no problem at all working with him.

I think it is true to say that I have never heard him utter a partisan sentiment in all the time I have known him. And in personal evaluations, he appears to be a firm believer that saying less is more.

So I gained hugely from his association with LKP in being able to write about the leasehold sector, sure in the knowledge that he would mobilise support if one of the sector’s more colourful characters decided to try it on.

But he was also a huge asset in all our other activities as well.

He would make sure we met ministers and senior officials; he came to meetings with the Prudential Regulation Authority – who stated that pension exposure to ground rents was very minor; the Financial Conduct Authority; the Competition and Markets Authority, and various freehold owning funds, property management companies complaining of unfair reporting on LKP and so on.

The fact that one of the most senior figures in Parliament was prepared to turn out for these meetings hugely enhanced the role and effectiveness of LKP. There was no particular advantage to him – the voters in Worthing were completely unaware of the bulk of these activities – but he believes himself to be a public servant, and this is what you do .

Then there were the regular meetings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform, which Peter chaired although he passed the actual chairing of meetings – most irregularly – to Martin.

This was the forum primarily responsible for getting the Law Commission to revisit commonhold, and outline the rest of the leasehold reform agenda. It also was vitally important to get justice for the leaseholders caught up with impossible bills for the cladding crisis.

These days the cladding leaseholders have very effective groups of their own, in End Our Cladding Scandal (EOCS) and UKCAG, the UK Cladding Action Group,

And then, of course, there is the brilliant National Leasehold Campaign, which has done so much to mobilise leaseholders nationally and to urge reforms.

Sun shines on the leaseholders’ demo at Parliament: after Jenrick, is this a new dawn?

A side interest of both Peter and myself – and LKP – has been the injustices faced by park home residents, which are so similar to those of retirement leaseholders. This has involved a couple of visits to Downing Street to deliver petitions.

Speaking up for Sonia McColl OBE, the park home campaigner who had her own park home stolen in a targeted attack, is something we can all be proud of – and justice actually did triumph in the end, with the crooks sent to prison (one recorded by police telling the other on his phone: “It was just a crappy caravan and an old biddy. I didn’t know she had an OBE and some weight behind her.”)

Park Home champion Sonia McColl OBE has her mobile home stolen … ‘after death threats’

Inside job goons found guilty of stealing park home of Sonia McColl OBE

The former housing minister (Lord) Stephen Greenhalgh says that the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rents) Act 2021 was stage 1 of LKP’s programme of leasehold reform and the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 was stage 2.

This is generous of him, but also unarguably true. It was our argument first to nail ground rents and remove their future, then sort the more complicated leasehold stuff, which the sector has so successfully bamboozled and thwarted in the past, with the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2001 being the saddest example.

I suppose some might say that the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 is another compromised reform, although that underestimates the weight behind it and the now mobilised leaseholders demanding action.

A stage 3 of reform is now needed, along with enactment of the secondary legislation that will make this Act effective.

I have no doubt that this will happen, but it is up to the Labour government now.

We will miss Peter Bottomley.

Who would not miss a person who, on being given a knighthood, said: “I do hope I have not done anything to deserve this.”

But I doubt we have heard that last of him, in leasehold or our wider national life, to which he has contributed so much.