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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the provisions of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 which prevent landlords charging ground rents for new, qualifying long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales in order to prevent landlords from requiring existing leaseholders to pay ground rent.

The Government has already legislated via the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 to protect future leaseholders and we are due to bring forward further leasehold reforms later in this Parliament.

We understand the difficulties some existing leaseholders face with high and escalating ground rents. This is why we asked the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate potential mis-selling of homes and unfair terms in the leasehold sector, which has resulted in commitments benefitting over 20,000 leaseholders.

The CMA continue to engage with a number of firms and we urge other developers to follow suit.