Phil Waite

DON’T WAVE THE WHITE FLAG ON PEPPERCORN GROUND RENTS 🏳️ I find it baffling that one of Labour’s rebel leaders, @justinmadders, is already surrendering on peppercorn ground rents while the fight is ongoing with this @UKLabour government. Labour rightly condemned the last Tory government for calling a snap election to avoid peppercorning existing residential ground rents, caving to deep-pocketed vested interests who understood that peppercorns destroy the leasehold asset class in other people’s homes. On ground rents, go big or go home! You are going to get sued anyway if you impose a £250 per annum cap. If ground rents are truly money-for-nothing, as the Competition and Markets Authority determined in 2024, then leaseholders should pay nothing. We elect politicians to govern for the common good, not to worry about how lobbyists might weaponise lawfare against government. At the election, Labour promised in its manifesto to END leasehold. But that means striking at the heart of the racket: ground rents. These are charges levied on captive leaseholders that deliver no service, no benefit, just pure profit for freeholders. Service charges are different. They are meant for the insuring and upkeep of a block of flats. Labour should be taking on these modern serfdom contracts, not falling for sector lobbyists and their privity of contract nonsense. There is a reason why leaseholds have been excluded from unfair contract terms legislation and consumer rights law more generally. These money-for-nothing ground rents were imposed by powerful players exploiting the huge asymmetry of information against far weaker parties, homebuyers, who are not active in this market every week like developers and their outriders, such as recommended panel solicitors. Strasbourg or the ECHR should not be a concern for a government that believes in doing right by the people. Reducing ground rents to a peppercorn regulates property use, it does not deprive freeholders of ownership. The freeholds remain theirs, they are just worth less than yesterday. When Margaret Thatcher defended Labour’s 1967 leasehold legislation against the freeholders, her government won at Strasbourg. Ground rent grazers should have invested in something productive, not socially toxic, literally snapping up the ground beneath homeowners’ feet and monetising it under a coercive legal structure they arrogantly thought Parliament would leave alone. Remember, in October the government won at the High Court against the freeholder lobby, who tried to weaponise the ECHR against the 2024 Act. The High Court confirmed that Parliament has a wide margin of appreciation in social and economic policy, including the power to interfere with leases even when doing so reduces the value of freeholders’ so-called assets. Madders should stop the hand-wringing about peppercorns and return to his previous stance, as leaseholders need maximalism against a multibillion-pound industry that will be jumping on any remarks about legal risks. Never accept your opponents’ framing.

Martin Lewis sadly refuses to run with this issue and supposedly has a longstanding policy of not adopting agendas already covered by campaign groups.

KEEP 🌶️ ON THEIR TAILS In 1995, @UKLabour promised to compel commonhold on all new flats. In 2002, they broke that promise. Millions more leasehold debt traps were created! For existing leaseholders, commonhold conversion must be cheap and not riddled with exclusionary rules.