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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what further steps he plans to take to ensure the availability of mortgages on leasehold homes.

Decisions concerning the pricing and availability of loans and deposit requirements are commercial decisions for lenders, made on their own risk appetite, considering factors such as market conditions and the funding they possess. The Government does not seek to intervene in these. We do, however, recognise that having a wide variety of affordable mortgage products on the market is important to a sustainable and healthy demand; and we discuss this with the industry regularly.

Whilst one lender may be unable to offer a mortgage in a particular case, this would not preclude a customer from being offered credit elsewhere. There are a wide variety of mortgage products available in the UK and it can be useful for customers to shop around and speak to a mortgage broker in order to find the best possible product.

We are also taking forward a comprehensive programme of leasehold reform to bring an end to unfair practices, including those which may affect mortgage availability. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 will put an end to ground rents for most new residential leasehold properties as part of the most significant changes to property law in a generation. We also understand the difficulties some existing leaseholders face with high and escalating ground rents. This is why we asked the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate potential mis-selling of homes and unfair terms in the leasehold sector.

Furthermore, with relation to our work on building safety, we have withdrawn the consolidated advice note which had been wrongly interpreted by lenders and fire risk assessors and drove an overly risk averse and cautious approach. We have also supported the publication of the British Standards Institutions' new PAS 9980 guidance for assessing risk in external walls. This guidance provides a methodology for a more proportionate and consistent assessment of risk posed by the external wall of a building.

We have also confirmed that those at fault, not blameless leaseholders, will be the ones who pay to fix unsafe cladding. This will further remove risk for lenders and help restore common sense to the market.