Commonhold and Leasehold Reform

Gareth Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his remarks and for advance sight of his statement. Progress on leasehold reform is to be welcomed. Labour promised that when it stood for election 18 months ago, so it is about time it got on with it, as the previous Conservative Government had started to do.

The previous Conservative Government began the process of fundamental reforms to the existing system of leaseholds by making it easier to extend a lease or to buy a freehold, increasing the standard lease extension time to 990 years, and giving leaseholders greater transparency over their service charges. His Majesty’s Opposition remain committed to giving leaseholders a fair deal, want householders to have security for the future and will continue to hold the Government to account on that.

The Government made big promises to leaseholders at the last election. Do they believe that the Bill is the summit of their ambitions? What about the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024? What are their plans to implement secondary legislation? There are opportunities to improve leaseholder situations that are available to the Government now. Why have they not implemented those changes? Surely, if they were serious about reform for leaseholders, they would have picked up the 2024 Act and run with it, rather than doing nothing until now. The Minister just said:

“I have made clear to the House on previous occasions, the last Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act contains a number of specific but serious flaws that prevent certain provisions from operating as intended and that need to be rectified via primary legislation.”

He went on to say:

“While not included in the draft Bill, our intention is to rectify those flaws in primary legislation.”

Perhaps he could tell us what those flaws are. If the Government have already identified them, why are the corrections not included in the forthcoming Bill? Surely now would be the time to rectify them. So if not now, when?

I would be remiss not to comment on one of the central principles of housing reform: there actually needs to be some housing in order to reform it. The Labour Mayor of London is delivering the lowest house building in London since 2009, while Labour’s national housing delivery is nowhere near where it needs to be to meet its 1.5 million homes target. What is Labour doing to ensure that there are strong incentives to build more? Where is the second planning Bill that the Government briefed out to the media that they will need to introduce because of their failure to get the planning reform right first time? The Conservative party is pro-development, which is why we have announced both a plan to review the London plan to improve on Labour’s failings in London and to ensure that national development is done on a brownfield-first approach.

Now, it is true that ground rent is an additional cost to leaseholders, but it is reported that the Chancellor is against capping ground rents because she believes it will deter pension fund investors. What does the Minister have to say to that?

The Government are claiming that these measures will reduce people’s bills, which would of course be welcome, but if leaseholder ground rent bills are simply replaced by soaring council tax bills, with some local councils now facing more than 30% rises in council tax due the Government’s grossly unfair funding review, how will people be better off? In inner London, which has a high proportion of leasehold flats, residents in councils such as Wandsworth, Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea are facing the double whammy of staggering rises in council tax and a council tax surcharge on top. Are the Government in fact claiming to cut a cost on one hand, while knowingly replacing it with even more costs on the other?

I would be grateful if the Minister answered those points in his reply. We will scrutinise the Government’s forthcoming commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, and we will hold the Government to account on their promises on leasehold reform and housing. We look forward to studying the details, and to the debates that will follow.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I note the initial positive tone from the shadow Minister in welcoming the draft Bill. I am slightly reluctant, on what is usually a matter of cross-party consensus, to be too critical of him, but it is a bit rich to criticise this Government, given that the previous Government cherry-picked reform in a way that was at odds with the Law Commission’s recommendation to treat all three of its reports as a holistic package, and left us with an Act that we will have to make a series of changes through primary legislation to fix so that we can implement the remaining provisions. I will, therefore, not take any strictures on ambition from the shadow Minister when it comes to leasehold reform.

I say plainly to the shadow Minister that we have switched on a number of the 2024 Act’s provisions already. On coming into office, we immediately enacted a series of provisions on rent charge arrears, building safety legal costs, and the work of professional insolvency practitioners. On 31 October we enacted further building safety measures; on 31 January we switched on the two-year qualifying exemptions for leaseholders; in March we switched on the right-to-manage provisions; and we are working at pace to take forward the rest of the significant package of secondary legislation that was required. However, some parts of those provisions require us to make fixes to the Bill—sadly, something that the previous Government left us with.

The shadow Minister mentioned housing supply, but again, I am loath to take lessons from a party that torpedoed housing supply in the last Parliament by making a series of anti-supply changes to the national planning policy framework, including the abolition of mandatory housing targets. The shadow Minister’s criticism could be taken a little more seriously if his colleagues did not come to me week in, week out, objecting to housing applications, telling me how our reforms will make it more permissive in their local constituencies.

We are getting on and taking forward the reforms to the leasehold system that are already on the statute book. Through this Bill, we are bringing forward the wider reforms necessary to bring that system to an end, which will be to the lasting benefit of millions of leaseholders across the country.