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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when he plans to bring forward legislative proposals on (a) leasehold property and (b) the right to manage.

The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. We are taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform to end unfair practices in the leasehold market. This includes measures to ban the sale of new leasehold houses, restrict ground rents to zero for future leases, give freehold homeowners equivalent rights to challenge unfair charges, and close loopholes to prevent unfair evictions.

We are working with the Law Commission to simplify the process of leaseholders exercising their Right to Manage, so that it is easier for leaseholders to come together to take on responsibilities for the ownership of their property. They will be publishing their report on this shortly, alongside reports on enfranchisement and commonhold, and we will consider these and set out our proposed way forward in due course.

Given the impact of Covid-19 on the legislative agenda, we will bring forward legislation on leasehold reform as soon as Parliamentary time allows.