Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she is taking steps to (a) simplify the process and (b) reduce the costs of extending the lease period for existing leaseholders.

The Government intends to act quickly to provide homeowners with greater rights, powers, and protections over their homes by implementing the provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. The Act will introduce an amended valuation scheme that leaseholders must follow to calculate how much they should pay to enfranchise. The method set by the Act for the valuation process removes the requirement for marriage value to be paid, caps the treatment of ground rents in the valuation calculation at 0.1% of the freehold value and allows Government to prescribe the rates used to calculate the enfranchisement premium. Rates will be set by the Secretary of State in secondary legislation.

The Act also includes a new statutory right to a 990-year lease extension for leaseholders of both houses and flats and makes extending a lease cheaper for leaseholders by requiring each side to pay their own process costs, such as valuation and solicitor's fees.

The implementation of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 will require an extensive programme of secondary legislation and we will set out the details in due course.