Harry on LBC this month
Harry Scoffin will be speaking at the Pension PlayPen at 10.30 am on Tuesday 11th November. It is of course armistice day and I hope we will break for a minute at 11am to remember that. Please join us for our next online Coffee Morning event.
Harry tells me he has examples of pension companies (well mainly annuity companies) campaigning to keep freeholders in charge of leaseholder’s property affairs. I know as a leaseholder that freeholders are anonymous but ugly in their behaviour. I want to find out more and though I’m going to be in the University College Hospital on remembrance day, though it is my 64th birthday – I will be on this call!
It would be helpful if you could sign in to tell us you can join us at http://www.pensionplaypen.com/events.
You can join the meeting directly on this link
If you have any problems with the link- you can use this longer link which can be pasted into your diary
Further detail of Harry’s recent work.
A blog in support of commonhold and Harry Scoffin
A “black out” elsewhere? Well not quite everywhere. This blog will continue to push for the rights of leaseholders to be treated fairly. Freeholders’s “woke hold band” will continue to resist change unless the voice of Harry Scoffin and those few who he can afford to work with him – is heard.
LBC should be commended, we will publicise the chance of a freehold and leasehold law being kicked to the end of parliament to be washed up and lost as Michael Gove’s was.
The Daily Mail is supportive of positive change. Here is Harry Scoffin in the Guardian.
In 1986 a former Duke of Westminster lost his right to abuse his freehold rights as a freeholder. The Duke lost to the Thatcher Government, but 40 years later nothing has come of it. Listen to Scoffin’s impassioned call on us to sign up to support him at
www.freeleaseholders.org.uk where you can sign the letter below
His appeal is to us as and most to campaigner Keir Starmer.
COMMONHOLD FOR THE MANY, NOT JUST THE NEW
Dear Keir Starmer,
Millions of leaseholders across England and Wales lent Labour their votes at the last election because your party’s manifesto pledged to end the leasehold system.
In your first King’s Speech, you promised that you would act “quickly” on leasehold and the 5.3 million leasehold households expect you to deliver.
We welcome your government’s push to reinvigorate commonhold, but there is dismay among existing leaseholders that we may be left behind while future buyers benefit – and will have to wait at least four more years for commonhold.
Meanwhile, Big Freeholders are trying to thwart the will of the people. They’re suing your government and will no doubt take their judicial review trolling all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
You must not cave to this campaign of intimidation by rich vested interests.
By requiring commonhold for new properties only, you create a two-tier housing market: one where legacy leaseholders are denied freedom and forced to live under different rules from buyers of new flats, who enjoy outright ownership and democratic rights as commonholders.
This will make it almost impossible for existing leaseholders to sell their homes – and leave them being milked by freeholders and their managing agents.
That’s why we’re calling on you to say no to two-tier, Keir – and deliver commonhold for the many, not just the new.
In 1995, Labour under Tony Blair promised they would deliver “an end to feudalism” by introducing commonhold and, 30 years on, leaseholders are still waiting.
Please don’t be paralysed by Big Freeholders’ lawfare. Leaseholders cannot be forced to wait for Strasbourg. Your government has the second biggest majority in Labour’s 125-year history – use it!
Truly ending leasehold means commonhold for the many, not just the new.
Railpen had approximately £1.3bn in its Long Term Income Pooled fund which included investments in ground rents. In addition fire safety issues were identified at a number of buildings associated with these ground rents.
The 2023 and 2024 annual reports for Railpen state that the Long Term Income Pooled Fund delivered a return of -20.6% for 2024, -15.3% in 2023, -14.6% per annum over a 3-year period, and -7.3% per annum over 5 years.
The Pooled Fund was also closed to trading of its units in both years.
Not large investments in the grand scheme of things across the whole UK pensions universe, but nine figure losses for one pooled fund in which a number of sections in one industry-wide DB scheme will have been invested.