'I've been billed for £7,000 having paid £5,000. I can’t afford to go to court. It’s killing me. I’ve been battling with the agent for years. I’ve paid all my service charges as the lawyer said I would be in breach of contract. The damp continues to seep through. The lawyer said I could pay in installments but I’m cleaned out. I cannot sell because of the dispute.’ That is an excerpt from a letter written by a resident shared at a leasehold reform conference today.

Consultant Shula Rich, who has been holding drop-in advice sessions for leaseholders since the 1990s, told the Westminster Legal Policy Forum that problems highlighted in the letter that she received was ‘not extreme and becoming more and more typical’.

On whether leasehold reforms so far have been effective, Rich said leaseholders now know someone cares and are more aware of the issues around leasehold. However, she said leasehold was not a good system. 'That you can separate the ground from the building – of course you can’t. Leasehold is building a legal fiction and I would suggest the law books are simply story books.'

The only way forward, said Rich, was who was involved in the first Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act, is to promote commonhold. For instance, with section 106 agreements, local authorities could promote commonhold as a condition for planning and encourage developers to establish commonholds.

'We need to stop the benefits of holding up right to manage,’ Rich added. ‘Presently, the freeholder can challenge a right to manage claim and they suffer no fine or punishment. That right to manage claim is held up until the first-tier tribunal decides it is or is not a legal claim. If the first-tier tribunal decides in favour of the right to manage claim, that should be backdated. Why [is it] that a shorthold tenancy can be an unfair contract, but you cannot make a long leasehold an unfair contract?'

Another concern raised at today’s conference, co-chaired by justice committee chair Sir Bob Neill MP, was issues around existing leases. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act, which came into force in June 2022, only applies to new residential leases. The government has previously described the act as a 'first step' and said it is committed to improving leasehold tenure.

 

This article is now closed for comment.