Guy Featherstonehaugh QC Archives - Leasehold Knowledge Partnership

Lawyers to Communities Select Committee: Stop ‘sticking plaster reforms’. End ‘draconian’ forfeiture. £10 ground rents a ‘mistake’. Make legal costs fair to leaseholders. Commonhold failed because developers make money out of leasehold …

February 1, 2019 By admin 17 Comments

The evidence provided to the Communities Select Committee by lawyers – and the Law Commissioner Professor Nicholas Hopkins – add up to devastating criticisms of the leasehold system. Three lawyers who have made their careers in the sector barely had a good word to say about leasehold law, when they came before the Select Committee […]

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Labour MP Helen Goodman fights ‘fleecehold’ rip-offs with Private Members’ Bill

Helen Goodman, Labour MP for Bishop Auckland, today launches her Private Members Bill to ban “fleecehold” charges on private estates. These are a where new estates have roads, lighting and communal spaces unadopted by the local council, which have to be maintained at the residents’ expense. Inevitably in the property world, this has become another […]

APPG, December 6: Park home banditry; Law Commission; Planners barring leasehold houses; London deputy mayor; gargantuan Grenfell bills for leaseholders

We are all waiting for Sajid Javid The All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform met on December 6 at Westminster. Overshadowing all was the conclusion of Communities Secretary Sajid Javid’s report on “Tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market”: the review that he announced in the summer, that concluded in September, into […]

Sunday Times reports Taylor Wimpey ground rent scandal, as executives meet leaseholders

The Taylor Wimpey ground rent scandal featured in the Sunday Times yesterday, as it emerges that executives are being sent out to visit the complaining leaseholders. The article was in the form of a reader’s letter from a £130,000 leasehold house owner in Bolton facing doubling ground rents from an initial £250. Garry Evans says […]

Bellway fears backlash over leasehold houses may eat into profits

Bellway today confirmed that it is wary of a buyers’ backlash over the leasehold houses scandal. Chief executive Ted Ayres has robustly stated that there is no such thing as a leasehold houses scandal, even though Taylor Wimpey has undertaken not to build them from January 1 this year. Between 2007 and 2011 Taylor Wimpey […]

First-time buyers facing £8,000 ground rents stuffed by plc housebuilders

First-time buyers are contacting LKP after finding that they cannot sell leasehold houses or flats which have draconian ground rents introduced by plc housebuilders. An epidemic of leasehold houses is now being built across the country, with a heavy concentration in poorer regions, such as the North West. LKP reported earlier this week that £1.9 […]

Grenfell cladding leaseholders despair of government doing anything ..

“For residents in private sector buildings identified as having this accelerant-type cladding we were often hopeful and encouraged by Government assurances from James Brokenshire and Kit Malthouse, that the cost will be met, not by leaseholders, but by the freeholder or developers. In a statement regarding this issue, Brokenshire threatened that if they did not […]

Sajid Javid calls for Grenfell cladding round table with developers and freeholders … and LKP will be invited

Communities Secretary Said Javid called today for a Grenfell cladding round table with developers and ground rent speculators … and LKP will be invited to attend. Mr Javid also repeated to the Commons his hope that freeholders and developers take more responsibility for the cladding, which is threatening financial ruin to thousands of families. The […]