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There need to be two urgent reforms.

Firstly corrupt solicitors need to be banned from accepting referrals from corrupt builders - a more blatant conflict of interest would be hard to imagine. If the solicitors in these cases hadn't been so much in the pockets of the developers they would have warned their (nominal) clients not to proceed, or renegotiated the terms to something acceptable, and the issue would never have arisen.

Secondly the procedure for forcing a freeholder to sell the freehold needs to be made far simpler in low value cases. I've taken cases to the Tribunal where the ground rent was maybe £10 p.a. and the sheer farcical rigmarole it involves is unbelievable.

Bundles have to be prepared and served, just as in a normal trial. Expert evidence is trotted out from chartered surveyors, and the Tribunal panel consisting of more expensive chartered surveyors will travel 50 miles to inspect a bog standard semi.

And then having pondered long and hard and read pages of valuation evidence they will solemnly opine that an appropriate value for the freehold is - £100!

It's the equivalent of requiring claims for a faulty washing machine to be determined by the multi-track procedure in the High Court.

It may - possibly - be justified where the property is a £10m house in Belgravia, but it's utterly absurd to apply exactly the same rigmarole to a £50k terraced house in Rochdale.

The procedure needs to be radically simplified, so that if the ground rent is less than, say, £1,000 p.a. and there are more than 100 years left on the lease the valuation is simply a multiple of the ground rent, as it is in compensation for the loss of a business lease under LTA 1954.

The multiplier figure could be set annually, and while they're at it they can also set a cap on the landlord's legal and surveyor's costs - some of the proposed figures I've seen for selling these piddling little ground rents would be funny if they weren't such shocking examples of naked greed.

But it won't happen, because the only people who would benefit are relatively poor and insignificant and such a common sense rule would annoy wealthy landowners who fill the coffers of the Conservative party to ensure they are left alone.