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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps is he taking to tackle unfair practises in the leasehold system.

This Government is committed to tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market. We have committed to banning new leasehold houses and restricting ground rents to a peppercorn and launched a technical consultation on the details of these proposals which closed on 26 November. We will publish the Government response in due course and bring forward primary legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

We are also working with the Law Commission to make it faster, fairer and cheaper for existing leaseholders to extend their lease or buy the freehold. The Law Commission have also consulted on making Right to Manage legislation so that leaseholders can more easily take control of running their buildings. The Government will consider next steps when the Law Commission reports later this year

In addition, we have also set up a Working Group, chaired by Lord Best, to look at how property agents can be improved, including a single, mandatory Code of Practice for managing agents and whether any fees should be capped or banned. We expect to receive the Working Group's recommendations this summer and we will respond with our plans later this year.

We recently announced a new government-backed industry pledge to make sure that leaseholders whose leases contain onerous terms such as doubling ground rents within 20 years, get the support they need. The new pledge announced on 28 March has been signed by more than forty leading property developers and freeholders.