Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to protect leaseholders who are subject to RPI ground rents and who have not been within the scope of the Competition and Markets Authority’s work on ground rents.

The department conducted an Impact Assessment for the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, which reported data on the level of ground rent in England and Wales. The Impact Assessment is available on the UK Parliament website here.

The English Housing Survey reports data on leaseholder charges, including data on the level of service charges and ground rents. The report is available from the department's website here.

The 2021 report by Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research also examined leasehold charges. It is published here.

The Government has legislated via the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 to protect future leaseholders from ground rents and we are due to bring forward further leasehold reforms later in this Parliament.

We understand the difficulties some existing leaseholders face with high and escalating ground rents. Unfair practices have no place in the housing market. This is why we asked the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate potential mis-selling of homes and unfair terms in the leasehold sector.

The CMA have secured commitments benefiting over 20,000 leaseholders, including commitments to return doubling ground rent terms to original rates. These settlements will help to free thousands more leaseholders from unreasonable ground rent increases. The CMA continue to engage with a number of firms and we urge other developers to follow suit.