Thank you to everyone who contacting me about leasehold reform.

Housing is my biggest priority in Islington, because every month I receive hundreds of emails from constituents badly impacted by exorbitant increases in service charges, unable to access social housing, or unable to get their foot on the property ladder. It’s completely unacceptable that under this government London is becoming unliveable for all but the wealthiest in our society.

So let me start by saying I share constituents’ sense of outrage at media reports suggesting the Housing Secretary, Michael Gove, has caved to leasehold investors and backbench Tory landlords and abandoned large parts of the Conservatives’ leasehold reform plans, including a long-promised pledge to cap ground rents. If these reports are true, it’s yet another broken promise from a government that, frankly, gave up on standing up for the interests of leaseholders a long time ago.

Michael Gove himself has described the leasehold system as feudal and archaic, and the government have been promising leasehold reform and a ban on new leasehold properties for more than six years. Yet that pledge had already been abandoned, with flats now excluded from the ban on new leasehold sales, despite the fact that they make up 70% of leaseholds. Now the Housing Secretary has apparently caved yet again on plans to cap ground rents, on a Bill that was already a shadow of what was once promised.

Unlike the government, Labour remains committed to comprehensive leasehold reform, and – if elected this year – we have pledged to enact the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in full. We are committed to:

• Ending the sale of new private leasehold houses at the point the Bill comes into force, with its provisions applied retrospectively to December 2017, and introducing a workable system to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold.
• Greater powers for residents over the management of their homes, with new rights for flat owners to form residents’ associations and a simplification of the Right to Manage.
• Introducing the right to extend a lease to 990 years with zero ground rent at any time; or a cap on ground rents when extending a lease to 0.1% of the freehold value, up to a maximum of £250 a year.
• Launching a crackdown on unfair fees and contract terms by publishing a reference list of reasonable charges, requiring transparency on service charges, and giving leaseholders a right to challenge rip-off fees and conditions or poor performance from service companies.

That’s the kind of bold action we need to end rip-off leaseholds for good, not more dithering and caving to vested interests by this clapped-out government. So please know that I will continue to champion reform that will tip the balance of power away from developers and back towards leaseholders and tenants where it should belong.