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I am all in favour of leasehold reform and in particular am pleased to the extent that these proposals will ban the iniquitous doubling of ground rents.

However the government has not addressed the issue of enforcing positive covenants, which is easier with long leases than it is with freehold properties.

Existing leaseholders will not benefits from the reduction in ground rents to zero.

I expect that leasehold houses will soon become a thing of the past.

A plausible scenario is that new build leasehold flats will be now sold off-plan at higher purchase prices than they currently are.

As ever, the devil will be in the detail. As an author on the subject of residential leasehold, I have all too often left been disappointed by previous changes to this complicated area of the law.