Housing secretary Michael Gove has taken to social media in recent days to drum up support for the government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
Gove has long pledged to end the leasehold system, calling it “outdated” and “feudal”.
He features in a new video, published on Twitter, urging MPs support he bill.
In the video, he states: “Homeownership is a wonderful thing, but for far too many people, they don’t fully own their own home – they are leaseholders. That means that they ultimately the property which they worked hard in order to secure a mortgage for isn’t completely their own. UNdeer our leasehold reform bill that changes.
“So the service charges that people have to pay, the ground rents, money for nothing, and the capacity to be able to transform that home into one that is fully your own. All that is reformed with our bill, and that’s why I believe that it’s so important that everyone in the House of Commons and the House of Lords gets behind this reform in order liberate leaseholders from the service charges and ground rents that are taking money out of their pockets unfairly and also so we can enable them to own their homes outright.”
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Gove also spoke with journalist and presenter Jeremy Vine about the planned bill.
In an interview, he said: “It [leasehold] dates back hundreds of years this system, and when it was originally sort of operating the idea was that you’d have a kind paternalistic landlord who would own the freehold of the building and it would be their job to look after the common parts and to make sure that the basic structure of the building was safe and, warm and decent and then you as the leaseholder would own your own flat within it.
However, Over time, the system has moved from being one of kind paternalists to one, where there are far too many sharks and bandits operating. And we have a system, exactly as you say, where people are landed with service charge bills, where they’re not clear why they’re being asked for so much money.
“There has been no transparency, and as you quite rightly point out as well, people have been charged ground rents, essentially money for nothing, in order to occupy the building and and again equally badly people because they have a lease, there are a number of years time to it and, as the years pass, instead of the value of your property increasing as it should, it diminishes. So we’re changing that so it makes it much easier for people to move from a 90 year lease tech 990 years. So effectively they will own their own their own flat outright.
“We are making sure that all of the things about the leasehold system that stand in the way of people being operators of their own home and being in control of their destiny go, so that is ground rents, unfair service charges and unfair restriction on being able to extend your lease. So what we’re doing is essentially making sure that we have ‘LENO’ – in leasehold name only.
Michael Gove urged to close ‘loophole’ in leasehold crackdown
Describing Jeremy Vine as a journalist is a bit of a stretch. Cycling vigilante would be more accurate.
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