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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many leasehold properties were (a) built and (b) approved in (i) England and (ii) Lancashire in each of the last five years.

(a) Leasehold properties built are included within the quarterly statistics on house building; new build dwelling completions that the Department collects from each building control inspector. However, figures for them are not separately identified.

The Department’s statistics on the Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme are published and available at the following link. This includes Tables 9, 9a and 9b with legal completions by property type and tenure (freehold and leasehold) on a cumulative, quarterly and local authority basis.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/help-to-buy-equity-loan-scheme-statistics-april-2013-to-30-september-2018.

In December 2017, the Government announced new measures to cut out unfair practices within the leasehold system, including a ban on leaseholds for almost all new build houses. We consulted on the technical detail of this in October 2018, and are currently analysing the almost 1,300 responses. We will publish our response in due course.

The Government has also announced that no future Government funded schemes will support the build and sale of leasehold houses. This will apply to the new Help to Buy scheme from April 2021.

(b) Planning approvals for leasehold properties are included within the quarterly statistics on planning decisions that the Department collects from each local planning authority. However, figures for them are not separately identified.