[2025] EWHC 2751 (Admin)

On the basis of our review of the LFRA 2024, and the various other materials admissible for the purpose of identifying the legislation’s social object, we accept the Secretary of State’s case that the LFRA 2024 was intended to address what had been identified as an inherent unfairness and imbalance in the nature of leasehold property, arising from:

We accept that that broad objective included within it improving the position of owner-occupier tenants. They provided a particularly popular means of illustrating the unfairness which campaigners for leasehold reforms wished to see addressed, and a particularly compelling argument for reform. However, we conclude that the objects of the LFRA 2024 were not limited to benefiting this smaller category of tenants than the LFRA 2024 actually applied to.

We also accept that it was also an object of the LFRA 2024 to simplify and reduce the cost of the process of enfranchisement – not simply as a “second order” object as a means of giving effect to the broader objective, but as an objective in itself. The object of simplification provided a further reason for not drawing distinctions between different types of tenant if it was not necessary to do so.

We accept that both of these objects are legitimate objects for A1P1 purposes. We note that in Wilson, the House of Lords held at [68] that “the fairness of a system of law governing the contractual or property rights of private persons is a matter of public concern”, and that “legislative provisions intended to bring about such fairness are capable of being in the public interest, even if they involve the compulsory transfer of property”. In the same passage, the House of Lords referred to a public interest in protecting from exploitation those wishing to borrow money, who are “often vulnerable”. We similarly accept here that the fairness of a system of law governing the holding of residential property, and of correcting what has been identified as a serious imbalance in the position of two classes of property owner in relation to leasehold interests, is capable of being in the public interest. Further, having identified the objects of the LFRA 2024, the issue of whether they are legitimate objects for ECHR purposes is one on which the view of Parliament is entitled to deference, or a wide margin of appreciation, for the reasons set out at [140]-[160] above.

As Ms Wakefield accepted, Parliament is best placed to form a view about what is in the public interest, and the court will respect Parliament’s judgment on the public interest unless it is “manifestly without reasonable foundation” or outside the wide margin of appreciation which must be accorded to that judgment.

We acknowledge that the object of “simplification” promotes a less weighty public interest, all other things being equal, than the broader objective we have identified, and that to the extent it operates independently of that objective, it will have less justificatory power. As we have already acknowledged, the nature of the compensation received by the landlords for the rights they are required to transfer is of central importance in the proportionality analysis.