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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reform residential leasehold and commonhold law.

The Government wants to ensure the leasehold system in England is fair and transparent to the consumer. Unfair practices in the leasehold market have no place in a modern housing market. Neither do excessive ground rents, which exploit consumers who get nothing in return.

Our technical consultation on how to improve the leasehold market and make it fairer for consumers closed on 26 November. It sought views on:

• how to ban the development of new build leasehold houses, other than in exceptional circumstances;
• how to restrict ground rents in newly established leases of houses and flats to a nominal, peppercorn value; and
• how to address loopholes in the law to improve transparency and fairness for leaseholders and freeholders.

The Government is carefully analysing the responses and will introduce legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows

The Secretary of State has asked the Law Commission to take forward further work to reform residential and commonhold law. The Law Commission is currently consulting on how to make buying a freehold or extending a lease easier, faster, fairer and cheaper, and how to reinvigorate commonhold to provide greater choice for consumers. The Law Commission is due to report to ministers on these issues in 2019. In addition, the Secretary of State has asked the Law Commission to look at improving the laws which allow leaseholders to manage their own buildings.