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The problem here appears to be that buyers have been sold houses on lengthy leases with hefty escalation clauses. The effect is readily apparent in that the escalation clause reduces the long term value of the property and in the short terms inflates the value of the freehold significantly. Effectively the property becomes unsaleable. In passing, there does not seem to be any good reason for these properties to be leasehold and the purpose appears to be a money making scheme for the developer. It does not appear that there has been significant discount on the purchase price to off set the long term cost of the leasehold (of course, there may have been but nobody has suggested that).
The job of the conveyancer faced with this is surely to advise accordingly. Although I take the point made by Martin Comport below (@15:17), I find it difficult to accept that any properly advised buyer would proceed (or at the very least, secure early and perhaps cheaper purchase of the freehold). It looks to me that this is simply an issue of negligent advice and affected buyers ought to be proceeding accordingly. A little bit of that sort of action is likely to clean up this part of the market pretty quickly.