• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Before Header

  • Home
  • What is LKP
  • Find everything …
  • Contact
Donate

Leasehold Knowledge Management Logo

Secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold reform

Mobile Menu

  • Home
  • What is LKP
  • Find everything …
  • Contact
  • Advice
  • News
    • Find everything …
    • About Peverel group
    • APPG
    • ARMA
    • Bellway
    • Benjamin Mire
    • Brixton Hill Court
    • Canary Riverside
    • Charter Quay
    • Chelsea Bridge Wharf
    • Cladding scandal
    • Competition and Markets Authority / OFT
    • Commonhold
    • Communities Select Committee
    • Conveyancing Association
    • Countrywide
    • MHCLG
    • E&J Capital Partners
    • Exit fees
    • FirstPort
    • Fleecehold
    • Forfeiture
    • FPRA
    • Gleeson Homes
    • Ground rent scandal
    • Hanover
    • House managers flat
    • House of Lords
    • Housing associations
    • Informal lease extension
    • Insurance
    • IRPM
    • JB Leitch
    • Jim Fitzpatrick MP
    • John Christodoulou
    • Justin Bates
    • Justin Madders MP
    • Law Commission
    • LEASE
    • Liam Spender
    • Local authority leasehold
    • London Assembly
    • Louie Burns
    • Martin Paine
    • McCarthy and Stone
    • Moskovitz / Gurvits
    • Mulberry Mews
    • National Leasehold Campaign
    • Oakland Court
    • Park Homes
    • Parliament
    • Persimmon
    • Peverel
    • Philip Rainey QC
    • Plantation Wharf
    • Press
    • Property tribunal
    • Prostitutes
    • Quadrangle House
    • Redrow
    • Retirement
    • Richard Davidoff
    • RICS
    • Right To Manage Federation
    • Roger Southam
    • Rooftop development
    • RTM
    • Sean Powell
    • SFO
    • Shared ownership
    • Sinclair Gardens Investments
    • Sir Ed Davey
    • Sir Peter Bottomley
    • St George’s Wharf
    • Subletting
    • Taylor Wimpey
    • Tchenguiz
    • Warwick Estates
    • West India Quay
    • William Waldorf Astor
    • Windrush Court
  • Parliament
  • Accreditation
  • [Custom]
Menu
  • Advice
  • News
      • Find everything …
      • About Peverel group
      • APPG
      • ARMA
      • Bellway
      • Benjamin Mire
      • Brixton Hill Court
      • Canary Riverside
      • Charter Quay
      • Chelsea Bridge Wharf
      • Cladding scandal
      • Competition and Markets Authority / OFT
      • Commonhold
      • Communities Select Committee
      • Conveyancing Association
      • Countrywide
      • MHCLG
      • E&J Capital Partners
      • Exit fees
      • FirstPort
      • Fleecehold
      • Forfeiture
      • FPRA
      • Gleeson Homes
      • Ground rent scandal
      • Hanover
      • House managers flat
      • House of Lords
      • Housing associations
      • Informal lease extension
      • Insurance
      • IRPM
      • JB Leitch
      • Jim Fitzpatrick MP
      • John Christodoulou
      • Justin Bates
      • Justin Madders MP
      • Law Commission
      • LEASE
      • Liam Spender
      • Local authority leasehold
      • London Assembly
      • Louie Burns
      • Martin Paine
      • McCarthy and Stone
      • Moskovitz / Gurvits
      • Mulberry Mews
      • National Leasehold Campaign
      • Oakland Court
      • Park Homes
      • Parliament
      • Persimmon
      • Peverel
      • Philip Rainey QC
      • Plantation Wharf
      • Press
      • Property tribunal
      • Prostitutes
      • Quadrangle House
      • Redrow
      • Retirement
      • Richard Davidoff
      • RICS
      • Right To Manage Federation
      • Roger Southam
      • Rooftop development
      • RTM
      • Sean Powell
      • SFO
      • Shared ownership
      • Sinclair Gardens Investments
      • Sir Ed Davey
      • Sir Peter Bottomley
      • St George’s Wharf
      • Subletting
      • Taylor Wimpey
      • Tchenguiz
      • Warwick Estates
      • West India Quay
      • William Waldorf Astor
      • Windrush Court
  • Parliament
  • Accreditation
You are here: Home / Latest News / Sucking a lemon, the Leasehold Advisory Service notes the ground rent Act – which it did absolutely nothing to assist

Sucking a lemon, the Leasehold Advisory Service notes the ground rent Act – which it did absolutely nothing to assist

February 11, 2022 //  by Sebastian O'Kelly

The Leasehold Advisory Service, long corroded by close proximity to the commercial interests in leasehold, tersely notes the passing of the enormously important achievement of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act.

It did precisely nothing to help it, and much to hinder, over many years.

Here is the chief executive, Anthony Essien, telling MPs of the Communities Select Committee, which raised serious criticisms of the £2 million a year service, that ground rents above 0.1% were onerous.

Martin Paine ‘is a crook who is turning sleaze in leases into an art form’, MPs told

Clive Betts, the chair, asked: “That is a clear view from your organisation is it?”

“Yes,” replied Mr Essien. If it increases beyond that with regular reviews it is “punishing”.

“Punishing?” asked Mr Betts. “That is a new definition. We have not heard that one before.”

But there was no suggestion that the Leasehold Advisory Service would support a ban on new ground rents.

The chair, Wanda Goldwag, also declined to endorse new ground rents of zero when interviewed by BBC R4’s You and Yours programme in 2019. She said only that contracts should be “fair”.

Not the job of LEASE to warn ministers of leasehold houses scandal, Roger Southam tells BBC

Ms Goldwag was asked whether she intended to have anyone directly affected by leasehold on the board of LEASE.

“No, I don’t,” she replied. “That is not how government bodies work. We have non-execs to make sure that the service is excellent.”

She praised Sir Peter Bottomley, who was interviewed on the programme, and others for their campaigning to reform leasehold.

“But my job is to ensure that while they campaign I provide the information and data of the trends and issues that people are facing.

Miss Goldwag said that she is eager to share the “every single piece of information that we have collected in the last five years about what people are complaining about” and give it to “government, the civil servants and the very, very good campaigning groups we have in this country”.

In fact, the Leasehold Advisory Service has been silent and irrelevant while the government sets about reforming leasehold and dealing with the building safety crisis.

Silent over egregious abuses; sucking up to the money; and of no use whatsoever over the ground rents scandal and so-so over the building safety one … which prompts the question: what is LEASE for?

Related posts:

Can the Leasehold Advisory Service monopoly survive devastating questioning by Select Committee? Leasehold Advisory Service has ‘been under review’ for 10 years. Here are the findings … New LEASE chair declines to endorse peppercorn ground rents on BBC Prisk to Bottomley: what’s the evidence that the Leasehold Advisory Service is not ‘balanced’? Well, how about this for starters … Just why is Roger Southam bothering with the Leasehold Advisory Service?

Category: Ground rent scandal, Latest News, LEASE, NewsTag: Anthony Essien, LEASE, Leasehold Advisory Service, Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill, Wanda Goldwag

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @LKPleasehold

Mentions

Anthony Essien (34) APPG (37) ARMA (87) Bellway (30) Benjamin Mire (32) Cladding scandal (71) Clive Betts MP (31) CMA (45) Commonhold (52) Competition and Markets Authority (41) Countryside Properties plc (33) FirstPort (43) Grenfell cladding (56) Ground rents (54) Harry Scoffin (150) James Brokenshire MP (31) Jim Fitzpatrick (35) Justin Bates (40) Justin Madders MP (67) Katie Kendrick (37) Law Commission (60) LEASE (66) Leasehold Advisory Service (62) Leasehold houses (32) Liam Spender (31) Long Harbour (48) Martin Boyd (80) McCarthy and Stone (39) National Leasehold Campaign (38) Persimmon (49) Peverel (61) Property tribunal (49) Redrow (30) Retirement (37) Robert Jenrick (33) Roger Southam (47) Sajid Javid (38) Sebastian O’Kelly (55) Sir Peter Bottomley (201) Taylor Wimpey (106) Tchenguiz (33) The Guardian (33) The Times (32) Vincent Tchenguiz (43) Waking watch contracts (40)
Previous Post: « Not waiting for Gove: Kelly Tolhurst MP urges freeholder Israel Moskovitz to halt court action against leaseholders over £2m cladding and building safety costs
Next Post: Hallmark Property Group seeks to put 44 flats worth £15m on top of a block with ACM cladding, waking watch, a B2 rating after EWS1 … and 75 utterly stressed out leaseholders Fletcher Court»

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. martin

    February 12, 2022 at 3:20 pm

    Most leaseholders will never know how close LEASE may have come to sabotaging this bill.

    Not only did their chair, Goldwag, and CEO, Essien, lobby against the changes it seems logical to assume they may well have provided input when the government went through a big wobble and it was suggested that a £10 ground rent was analogous to a peppercorn rent. That argument went on behind the scenes for many months with Minister Heather Wheeler saying she did not see a problem. It took a lot of input from LKP and a number of lawyers to get back to the position that a peppercorn is a peppercorn not a nominal sum.

    Of course given the history of LEASE and the fact that a number of their chairs have been in the ground rent game leaseholders may not be surprised.

  2. Albert

    February 15, 2022 at 4:58 pm

    I can’t believe that LEASE carried on with the same old ‘business as usual’ when it was blatantly clear that they were infiltrated by the very people who were only too willing and ready to to extort money from leaseholders, this happened some years ago and instead of being a service for ordinary people it became a forum for the unscrupulous on how to take advantage of an already biased system in favour of freeholding management companies.
    It makes you wonder if there were other concerns or fingers in pies as to why this happened.

    I needed advice at the time from LEASE and after a number of enquiries it seemed to me that the whole leasehold system was rigged, I wrote to a hon. Lady at the time and ended up making a decision based on the fact that eventualy the leasehold rules must change in order that justice will prevail, that was some 10 yrs ago and I am still waiting, but I am glad I made my decision to ignore the artificial rules made up by those whose only interest is to extract the maximum money for the absolute minimum and seemingly to enjoy in an sadistic way making peoples lives a misery.

    Albert.

Above Footer

Advising leaseholders. Avoiding disasters.
Stopping forfeiture. Exposing abuses. Urging reform.

We depend on individuals for the majority of our funding.

Support Us and Donate

LKP Managing Agents

Become an LKP Managing Agent

Common Ground
Adam Church
Blocnet property management2

Stay in Touch

To achieve victory in the leasehold game where you are playing against professionals and with rules that they know all too well - stay informed with the LKP newsletter.
Sign Up for Newsletter

Professional Directory

The following advertisements are from firms that seek business from leaseholders.
Click on the logos for company profiles.

Footer

About LKP

  • What is LKP
  • Privacy and data

Categories

  • News
  • Cladding scandal
  • Commonhold
  • Law Commission
  • Fleecehold
  • Parliament
  • Press
  • APPG

Contact

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership
Open Data Institute
5th Floor
Kings Place
London N1 9AG

sok@leaseholdknowledge.com

Copyright © 2023 Leasehold Knowledge Partnership | All rights reserved
Leasehold Knowledge Partnership Limited (company number: 08999652) is a company limited by guarantee that is a registered charity (number: 1162584) with the Charities Commission.
LKP website is hosted at www.34sp.com
Website by Callia Web