‘This system is not business, it is blackmail,” Lloyd George said of leasehold in 1909. More recently, it has been described by Rishi Sunak as “a scam” when he was a junior minister in 2018, and as “feudal” and “archaic” this year by Michael Gove, the housing secretary, and Matthew Pennycook, Labour’s housing spokesperson.
Under the leasehold system in England and Wales, owners of properties, in particular flats, do not purchase their homes outright, but buy the right to live in their home for the remainder of time left on their lease. They are a tenant of their landlord, the freeholder, who retains ownership of the land on which the property is built.
