Labour’s housing minister has admitted leasehold reforms could take another five years, despite promising just weeks earlier that his party would “act quickly”.
Matthew Pennycook told the Telegraph in September that the Government would accelerate its plans to give almost five million leaseholders greater rights, powers and protections over their homes.
But on radio station LBC on Saturday, Mr Pennycook admitted that Labour’s commitment in its manifesto to finally bring the “feudal” leasehold system to an end was “a whole of Parliament commitment”.
The current Parliament will end in five years, meaning homeowners could be waiting until 2029 before leasehold – or “fleecehold” as Mr Pennycook often calls it – is banned.
There are 4.8 million leasehold properties in England, equivalent to a fifth of English housing stock.
In its manifesto, Labour said it would “ban new leasehold flats and ensure commonhold is the default tenure”. The party went on to reiterate this promise in the King’s Speech, also promising to regulate ground rents and to “act quickly” to implement its reforms.
In May 2023, the then-shadow housing secretary, Lisa Nandy, said a future Labour government would bring forward legislation to abolish leasehold within 100 days. But in April, the party quietly dropped this pledge.