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 respond to the Law Commission’s recommendations on leasehold reform; and if he will make a statement.

We are working with the Law Commission to make buying a freehold or extending a lease easier, quicker and cheaper, and to reinvigorate Commonhold to provide consumers with a choice of tenure, and to reform the Right to Manage to help empower those that wish to, to take on management responsibilities for their properties.

In January this year the Law Commission published their first of four reports, on the valuation aspects of enfranchisement, followed on 21 July by their further three reports on the remaining aspects of enfranchisement, Commonhold, and Right to Manage. Further information can be found here: https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/residential-leasehold-and-commonhold/.

We will be publishing further details of how Government will take forward reform across these key policy issues as soon as possible. This is a long-term reform programme; it is complex and controversial with many interdependencies and will take time to get the detail right. Once it is enacted the effect will be felt for generations and so we are determined this work considers all the implications with care.