“An End to Feudalism” was the promise our party first made to leaseholders in 1995. It was the title of a pamphlet authored by Nick Raynsford and Frank Dobson, Keir Starmer’s predecessor in Holborn and St Pancras, and it gave hope to millions of leaseholders in advance of the 1997 election.
We failed them. The Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act of 2002 was a weak act that watered down key demands and failed to do away with the corrupt rentier system.
Nearly 30 years later and we are back here again, with a weak Conservative bill too afraid of the property industry and unwilling to give people true ownership over their own homes. Soon it will fall to on an incoming Labour government to remedy this long-standing injustice.
Over five million people now live in leasehold properties in the UK. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill has just concluded its clause by clause scrutiny stage in Parliament.
The Bill makes it slightly easier for existing leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold, but does nothing for millions of leaseholders trapped in properties they can neither afford nor sell.
The government’s bill is 133 pages of tinkering with a fundamentally unjust system. Leasehold needs abolishing, not updating. It’s a relic of a feudal system.
Read the full piece in LabourList here.