This morning’s session of Pension PlayPen will see two campaigners at opposite ends of their career , speak out with one voice against the ongoing calamity of our freehold/leasehold system of home ownership.

Norma Cohen , should be know to everyone and the fact that she isn’t is a crying shame. For no other reason than to be on the same call as one of our greatest journalists, thinkers and writers, you should be at this morning’s event (10.30am – free link below)

This blog will focus on Harry Scoffin who is at the outset of his career but is already doing things that have attracted seasoned veterans like Norma, to support him. Harry is carrying the flag for leaseholders held hostage by freeholders , forced into paying

• Ground rents based on some spurious formula which offer freeholders money for nothing
• Managing agents who more often than not are agents for the freeholder not the leaseholder
• Premia for insurances and other service charges which reward managing agents and freeholders through commissions while offering leaseholders poor value for their money.

These and many more iniquities heaped upon leaseholders, will be discussed this morning. What will also be discussed is the way that the Freeholder’s association has attempted to capture “the pensioner” as its champion.

Harry is right, the pensioner is much more likely to be the victim of the disgraceful practices of freeholders than to benefit from the “income streams” arising from these bad practices.

It is not just the elderly who are victims, leaseholders are forced into forfeiture of their leases if they don’t pay up to the excessive demands of the usually anonymous freeholder

So why are we featuring this in the Pension PlayPen

It’s not just the hi-jacking of the pensioner as a false ally of the freeholder that we should be worried about. It’s the hijacking of our pension schemes which all too often are being invested in funds that own freeholds managed to extract rent from ordinary people who know nothing about the ultimate owners of the land their properties occupy.

We talk about “engagement” but if ordinary people knew what freehold funds are doing – in the name of pension solvency, they would cry foul. This is not how we should make our money matter, pension schemes have a fiduciary duty to support members not to pillage them. They have a duty to report and manage on ESG, how can these practices be regarded as “social”? They have a duty to engage members in what they are invested in, how can they possibly do that when pensioner’s money is invested in such a bad way.

Recently, John Chilman and the Railways Pension Scheme decided to ditch freehold funds from their portfolios for the reasons argued by Harry and Norma. The PLSA was forced into an ignominious u-turn when it saw the writing on the wall. They are no longer cheerleaders for freehold funds.

At this morning’s meeting we will be asking how it ever came to this. How did pension funds get mixed up in the shady practices of freeholders and the managing agents of leasehold properties. My questions to Norma and Harry will be..

This should be an all time great session of Pension PlayPen and because you have been good enough to read or scroll to the bottom of the page, I am giving you a free link to the event.

Free link to today’s event