The local election results should have been a wake-up call for the government.
A demand for radical change and for taking on the vested interests holding our country back as greedflation soars.
No support for more tinkering to protect Big Money, while the people are being skinned alive in their homes because of leasehold.
Instead, yesterday’s King’s Speech announced a Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill infected with the status quo.
Starmer’s incrementalism strikes again.
The only change from the draft Bill is absurd.
Leaseholders, instead of gaining rightful control of your rip-off service charges, a right to petition at the feet of your freeholder master for permission to get an internet connection!
The government is laughing at you: “let them eat cake”.
Our statement on X, reproduced below, has now reached over 600,000 views, angering the government and their lapdogs.
But we need to shout louder as Labour’s leadership chaos risks burying the story.
And that’s where you come in:
ACTION REQUIRED: JOIN PHIL IN OUR NEXT VIDEO
If you voted Labour at the general election but voted against the ruling party on the 7th because of the government’s dire leasehold record, we want to hear from you.
Especially if you moved to the Greens or Liberal Democrats, who mobilised strongly on Labour’s leaseholder betrayal ahead of the polls.
Londoners are also welcome, particularly in areas like Hackney, Southwark and Greenwich.
Join the fightback against the government’s sham leasehold reform by taking part in our new video.
No media experience is needed. It will be no more than 20 minutes on Zoom.
Your block, freeholder and managing agent won’t be identified, we’ll just require your first name and local authority.
If you’d like your voice to be amplified and can be available in the next few days, email harry@freeleaseholders.org.uk Weighing it up? Still drop Harry a line.
And to see how far this government has fallen, see our We Got the Power video, which went viral on X, featuring campaign supporters soon after Labour came to power on a manifesto promise to end leasehold for good:
LEASEHOLDERS SCREWED BY STARMER’S SECOND KING’S SPEECH: STATEMENT FROM FREE LEASEHOLDERS 13/5/26
To save his premiership, on Monday Keir Starmer lambasted the politics of incrementalism, yet the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill announced in today’s King’s Speech is infected with the status quo.
This is more talk big, act small politics from the Starmer government.
It is an insult to the millions of leaseholders being looted in their homes that a Labour government has walked back its manifesto promise to “end” the feudal leasehold system, instead serving up sham “reform” designed to keep Big Money interests happy.
Astonishingly, the only new measure appears to be little more than a right for leaseholders to petition at the feet of their freeholder masters for permission to get an internet connection. It is the modern-day equivalent of telling the peasants to eat cake.
The inclusion of this pro-leasehold measure comes just days after the main freeholder lobby group held a cosy conference with a PR firm and government civil servants, seeking to reposition themselves as Net Zero delivery partners to gain control over even more of captive leaseholders’ hard-earned money under the guise of essential block “improvements”.
Our supporters are trapped in their homes, unable to sell or remortgage and suffering negative equity, while Hamptons has found that 37% of leasehold flats now have service charges in excess of 1% of the property value, which lenders increasingly refuse to back.
Right to Manage, for those lucky enough to perform the legal somersaults required to qualify, already shows that leaseholders can take a chainsaw to wasteful spending, with our supporters achieving average service charge savings of 20–30% by removing extractive freeholders and choosing local contractors.
Yet this Bill fails to slash the red tape and introduce a universal Right to Manage, despite the Law Commission’s 2020 blueprint and its inclusion in the Labour manifesto and the first King’s Speech.
With this Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, the government is propping up the service charge racket and the property mafia who benefit.
Instead of giving leaseholders rightful control of their homes, money, and lives in a cost of living emergency, Starmer and his ministers have sided with vested interests, which is killing the housing market.
It would be particularly cruel to bring forward amendments to the 2024 Act while still leaving leaseholders in financial servitude to their freeholders because they cannot afford to buy out their freehold due to uncapped development value.
This is despite the Law Commission’s recommendation to restrict development value, and a previous Conservative promise that was ultimately dropped under lobbying pressure before the 2024 legislation was passed.
Under Starmer’s Labour, leaseholders are doomed as corporate capture of policymaking continues in the post-Mandelson era.
