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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has plans to bring forward legislative proposals to reform the regulation of leasehold properties.

The government remains committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service

We have set out a strong package of measures to tackle unfair practices in the leasehold market. This includes a commitment to bring forward legislation to ban the unjustified use of leasehold for new houses, reducing future ground rents to zero financial value, and introducing new rights to challenge fees for freeholders on private and mixed tenure estates. We are also working with the Law Commission to make buying a freehold or extending a lease easier, faster, fairer and cheaper, as well as reinvigorating Commonhold and making Right to Manage easier, to provide greater choice for consumers

The government is also working to ensure charges related to leasehold properties are transparent and communicated effectively and that there is a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong. Last October we established an independent working group chaired by Lord Best to raise standards across the property sector, which also considered how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers. The working group published its final report to government on 18 July. We are considering the report’s recommendations and will announce next steps in due course.

We remain committed to legislating on leasehold reform as soon as parliamentary time allows.