Leasehold reform needs to happen faster, warns London Assembly member

Labour’s City Hall housing spokesperson said leaseholders are unable to plan their lives due to the slow progress with implementing new laws, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter

Flats in London and (inset) assembly member Sem Moema

Ministers must set out firm dates for leasehold reform to give certainty to nervous London homeowners, a senior assembly member has said.

Sem Moema, the Labour group’s housing spokesperson in City Hall, said leaseholders are unable to plan their lives due to the slow and uncertain implementation of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 across the country.

More than a third of housing stock in London – 36.1% – is leasehold, meaning property owners are liable to pay service charges imposed by freeholders. Londoners are more than twice as likely as the rest of the country to be leaseholders.

Last year Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan was told to take action to cap service charges after a London Assembly housing committee report found the median household in the capital was paying out £3,912 every year. City Hall has subsequently launched a probe into how service charges on leasehold properties are affecting the housing crisis.

On a national basis, ministers have pledged to scrap the leasehold system for new developments, but housing minister Matthew Pennycook said it would not happen “overnight” and could take years.

However, in his conference speech on Tuesday (29th), Burnham said that the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill will be introduced to parliament by Christmas after a series of delays. The day before, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said the government would protect leaseholders by creating a new independent regulator for managing agents and capping “rip off” administrative fees.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) days earlier, Moema said moving faster and further on the issue was key for Londoners, who are “uniquely exposed” to the problems caused by leasehold.

“This is about the roof over your head,” she said.

“If we want to stop people being homeless, stop people being bankrupted, then we need to just outline when this is going to happen.

“The lack of a timetable means that there are no milestones for people to kind of aim towards or work towards.

“It’s been two years [of a Labour government] – we should be able to say that in twelve or 18 months, we anticipate that ‘X’ will happen, so that a leaseholder can plan their life.”

She claimed that the current political discussion around leasehold was “very grand” about ending the system rather than focusing on realistic, incremental changes.

Moema gave the example of putting dates on various issues such as ending marriage values, which can mean leaseholders incur significant costs to extend their lease.

“Those sorts of things need to happen in the meantime,” she said, calling on MPs to set aside more parliamentary time to lay down the legislation needed to do so.

She added: “What’s more of an issue is that we’ve not yet gone back to people, who supported us [on this], to say: ‘This is what we’re doing for you.’”

The assembly member had been speaking at a fringe event at the Labour Party’s annual conference held by the Labour housing group.

During the session, Katie Kendrick, founder of the National Leasehold Campaign, said that current provisions for leaseholders to challenge payments were “not fit for purpose” and also called for interim reforms to ease the burden.

“There is no magic wand that will end leasehold tomorrow,” she said.

“The reality is that it will be around for a long time – but we need to help leaseholders now.”

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