Labour minister caught in a lie over leasehold betrayal

Leasehold properties are a national scandal, and these properties are causing misery for millions of people. Labour promised to end this issue, but in government they’ve instead opted to kick the can down the road. The problem is they want voters to believe they’re solving the problem even as they refuse to do so.

As an example of this in action, please see the following from Labour’s minister of state for housing and planning:

Oh… right. https://t.co/orvrBLe28D pic.twitter.com/lYnHBtjJmV

— cladtrap (@cladtrap) March 27, 2026

Leasing the truth

The problem with leasehold properties is they combine the cost of purchasing a house with the downsides of not actually owning one, as HG wrote for the Canary in January this year:

Most flats in the UK are leasehold, along with some shared ownership houses.

Freehold means a resident owning their property and the land it is built on. On the other hand, leasehold means owning the property for a fixed period, while still paying ground rent to the landlord, who either owns the building (such as a block of flats) or the land.

When the lease ends, ownership returns to the landlord.

In comparison, commonhold provides freehold ownership for flats or other interdependent buildings.

Pennycook said he’d ‘end’ leasehold in parliament:

This Labour government is ending the feudal leasehold system and easing cost of living pressures for millions of leaseholders across the country. pic.twitter.com/6A1RTvQQHS

— Matthew Pennycook MP (@mtpennycook) January 27, 2026

He also made it clear it would happen “over the course of this Parliament” — i.e. that it would happen before the next elections in 2029:

Imagine being an MP and this is how you find out Hansard exists… https://t.co/65qOS3hU7I pic.twitter.com/VolmXi12nV

— HutchOnline (@Hutch_Online) March 27, 2026

Do ‘abolish’ and ‘end’ mean the same thing in every context?

No.

But they both clearly give the impression that leasehold would no longer exist under Labour — i.e. that it would ‘end’.

Demonstrating that this position is unpopular with the party’s own members, Labour Party activist Matt Lismore said the following:

I don’t think people realise that creating a 2 tier flats market with leasehold (existing) and commonhold (new) could crush leasehold property values further.

That would place leading UK banks in the position of holding huge volumes of mortgages where the borrower is in negative equity.

This wouldn’t be an issue if defaults stay low, but should a significant number of leaseholders start defaulting, banks could be in considerable bother, causing significant harm to the UK economy.

Further, if leasehold flat values fall after commonhold comes in, even more properties will fall into the service charge > 1% of value bracket, making them largely unmortgageable.

Matt Pennycook, it is vital that we don’t create a 2 tier market in flats – it has the capacity to have significant knock on consequences.

Labour — collapse in real-time

Lismore isn’t voicing a niche opinion or unwarranted concern. If you want to see what’s happening to leasehold properties in the UK, simply look at the property market:

had a quick look through this account and bascially every example is a leasehold lol https://t.co/K1JetQtxal

— sonny (@SonnyTLoughran) March 23, 2026

To be fair, houses should be cheaper. At the same time, these houses aren’t cheaper because we’ve fixed the housing problem; they’re cheaper because no one wants to live in them them.

Labour aren’t fixing a problem in a sensible and incremental way; they’re allowing an entirely new problem to fester to keep property developers happy. And it’s going to result in misery for anyone who owns one of the nearly 5 million leasehold properties in the UK.

Featured image via author

Tags: Labour Party UK

Comments 2

Michael O'Driscoll says:

3 months ago

Here is a cleaned-up version with spelling and grammar corrected:

It is very notable that the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity supposedly representing the interests of leaseholders, is amplifying government propaganda,
https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/pennycook-promises-to-end-leasehold-this-parliament
while its “sister” organisation, the National Leasehold Campaign, is telling users that they must not make “political posts” and is blocking people who criticise either the government or LKP/NLC.

I have personally been blocked from the NLC Facebook group, to which I have contributed over several years — I was not even given a reason. I know that many others have experienced the same.

LKP and NLC seem content with the current reforms, even though they are a long way from what labour promised. The vast majority of leaseholders however are now realsing the scale of the betrayal and are rightly angry.

LKP and NLC seem to many to be a controlled opposition. Too close to government and in LKP’s case with a serious conflict of interest. Martin Boyd (LKP director) is also head of LEASE and is therfore in a civil service post in effect. LKP also acts as ‘secretariat’ to the all party parliamentary group (APPG) on leasehold reform.

LKP and NLC are totally out of step with the views of most leaseholders and are not accountable to leaseholders in any way – the policy positions of LKP and NLC are decided by themsleves and do not result from any consultatiion with leaseholders.

In my view LKP also seem far too cosy with some developers, namely Berkeley Homes, and such is their desire to ‘big them up’ that they gave what I consider a misleading statement to parliament on 17th March 2026 when they said that Berkeley Homes ‘handed over’ control of Chelsea Bridge Wharf devlopment to the leaseholders (Right to Manage Company). In fact BH contested the RTM application and the previous one in 2012, which is a matter of public record. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67aa1f9f699d77bee01484a7/Chelsea_Bridge_Wharf_-_final_decision__28.1.25__V2.pdf

LKP’s account of what happended at Chelsea Bridge Wharf is factually incorrect in many other important respects – this is what actually happended

https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/2026/02/28/the-governments-consultation-on-the-leasehold-and-commonhold-reform-bill-a-response-from-leaseholders/

and it is not a tale of leaseholder empowerment and enlightemed developers as LKP would have us believe.

Michael O'Driscoll says:

3 months ago

It is very notable that the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a charity supposedly representing the interests of leaseholders, is amplifying government propaganda,
https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/pennycook-promises-to-end-leasehold-this-parliament
while its “sister” organisation, the National Leasehold Campaign, is telling users that they must not make “political posts” and is blocking people who criticise either the government or LKP/NLC.

I have personally been blocked from the NLC Facebook group, to which I have contributed over several years — I was not even given a reason. I know that many others have experienced the same.

LKP and NLC seem content with the current reforms, even though they are a long way from what labour promised. The vast majority of leaseholders however are now realising the scale of the betrayal and are rightly angry.

LKP and NLC seem to many to be a controlled opposition. Too close to government and in LKP’s case with a serious conflict of interest. Martin Boyd (LKP director) is also head of LEASE and is therefore in a civil service post in effect. LKP also acts as ‘secretariat’ to the all party parliamentary group (APPG) on leasehold reform.

LKP and NLC are totally out of step with the views of most leaseholders and are not accountable to leaseholders in any way – the policy positions of LKP and NLC are decided by themselves and do not result from any consultation with leaseholders.

In my view LKP also seem far too cosy with some developers, namely Berkeley Homes, and such is their desire to ‘big them up’ that they gave what I consider a misleading statement to parliament on 17th March 2026 when they said that Berkeley Homes ‘handed over’ control of Chelsea Bridge Wharf devlopment to the leaseholders (Right to Manage Company). In fact BH contested the RTM application and the previous one in 2012, which is a matter of public record. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67aa1f9f699d77bee01484a7/Chelsea_Bridge_Wharf_-_final_decision__28.1.25__V2.pdf

LKP’s account of what happened at Chelsea Bridge Wharf is factually incorrect in many other important respects – this is what actually happened

https://chelseabridgewharf.org.uk/2026/02/28/the-governments-consultation-on-the-leasehold-and-commonhold-reform-bill-a-response-from-leaseholders/

and it is not a tale of leaseholder empowerment and enlightemed developers as LKP would have us believe.