[2025] EWHC 2751 (Admin)

The Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 27 November 2023. The Bill’s Explanatory Notes referred in its “overview section” to making “long-term changes to home ownership for millions of leaseholders”.

Also on 27 November 2023, the Government published a response to consultation on “Reforming the leasehold and commonhold systems in England and Wales” (the “Commonhold Response”). This contained references to broadening “access to the right to manage and enfranchisement so more leaseholders can manage and own their homes” and delivering “a better deal for leaseholders as consumers while taking into account the legitimate rights of freeholders.” However, the Government’s objective was also defined in wider terms: “the Government’s programme aims primarily to improve the leasehold system for leaseholders” and that the object was “improving access to enfranchisement” and promoting “transparency and fairness in the residential leasehold sector.” The only discussion of a distinction between different types of leaseholder came in question 5, on the issue of possible exemptions from the non-residential limit for collective enfranchisement, which states “we agree with the Law Commission that these rights should be available to all residential leaseholders and that drawing a distinction between commercial investors and residential leaseholder would be neither workable nor desirable” ([2.39]). Reference was made to difficulties of definition, additional complexity and the impact on other leaseholders in the collective enfranchisement context, including the risk of disenfranchising leaseholders.

The IA was published on 11 December 2023, at the time of the Second Reading in the House of Commons. The Parties have identified key figures, statistics and estimates in the IA in Agreed Statement F – ‘Key Statistics on Effects of the Legislation’.

The Bill published in December 2023 also contained a statement under s.19(1)(a) of the HRA Act 1998 that the provisions of the Bill were compatible with the ECHR.

In January 2024, in response to a Government consultation on restricting ground rent for existing leases (the “CMA 2024 Response”), the CMA highlighted a number of concerns with ground rent practices at that time, including ground rents which increased in line with RPI and/or doubled periodically ([32]-[36]). The CMA was not persuaded that the extent of an obligation to pay ground rent was reflected in the price for the property and saw no persuasive evidence that the leaseholder received anything in return ([42]-[43]).

The Committee stage in the House of Commons took place across ten sittings over five days in January 2024.