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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the timeline is for the proposed leasehold reform as set out in the Written Statement entitled Housing Policy Update, published on 2 July 2018, HCWS818.

The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for leaseholders and freeholders and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. On 27 June, we published the Government response to the technical consultation Implementing reforms to the leasehold system in England.

We have confirmed our commitment to legislate to ensure that in future all new houses will be sold on a freehold basis, with specific exemptions for exceptional circumstances, and to reduce ground rents on future leases to a peppercorn (zero financial value).

We will also give freeholders on private and mixed-use estates the right to challenge the reasonableness of estate rent charges and the right to apply to the First-tier Tribunal to appoint a new property manager. In addition, we will mandate that freeholders and managing agents must provide leasehold information – when a home is being sold – within 15 days and set the maximum fee for providing this information at £200 (plus VAT).

We will bring forward the legislation to implement these changes as soon as Parliamentary time allows.