Festus Akinbusoye: Time to serve notice on ‘leasehold’ – our feudal property ownership system

Festus Akinbusoye was the Conservative Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner from 2021 to 2024.

A friend recently told me that the annual service charge on his leasehold flat has risen to £13,000 a year, having been just £3,000 when he bought the property six years ago. It gets worse.

He has been trying to sell the flat for nearly 18 months, but at 31 he can see no realistic future in the property and yet has no obvious way out. The charges are set to increase again by £4700 in April 2026. Alongside the financial pressure sits the emotional toll, feeling of being trapped, and being completely powerless.

This wild-west experience is becoming increasingly common, particularly in London and estate agents now routinely report falling demand for leasehold flats.

The chilling effects are being felt in the wider housing market across the country. Developers face a shrinking pool of willing buyers alongside growing lender caution, which has contributed to a slowdown in new residential leasehold starts. At the same time, demand for freehold and share-of-freehold homes has surged, driving up prices and widening the gap between those who can escape leasehold and those who cannot.

These distortions matter because a housing market that does not allow people to move freely just traps capital, deters labour mobility and reduces housing supply creating a clogged housing market. Conservative Party policy to scrap stamp duty on residential property will help, but we must go further.

The broader economic implications are serious.

When young people cannot get a foot on the housing ladder, many will vote with their feet, choosing to relocate elsewhere in the UK or to build their lives abroad. London, and eventually other parts of the country, cannot afford to lose talented and productive people simply because they are unable to secure an economic stake in the places where they live and work.

Practical Reform Is Needed Now

Addressing these problems does not require tearing up the system overnight, but it does require clear direction and political willingness to act.

A crucial first step is the universal introduction of peppercorn ground rents. Ground rent serves no productive economic function in modern housing, yet it entrenches an asymmetry of power between freeholders and leaseholders. Reducing ground rents to a true peppercorn removes one of the most exploitative features of leasehold, improves mortgageability and stabilises values. While it does not solve every problem, it restores confidence and creates space for deeper reform to follow.

Beyond that, commonhold must be allowed to function as the de facto ownership model it was intended to be. It already exists in law but has never been properly supported. Other countries have shown how commonhold ownership frameworks can evolve successfully over time. Sweden, Scotland and Australia are examples.

Australia offers a useful lesson. New South Wales introduced the world’s first strata title system in 1961, and since then the framework has been repeatedly updated. The key insight is that these systems work best when treated as living frameworks that adapt over time rather than as static legal experiments.

The same approach should be taken here. Commonhold and freehold should increasingly become the default homeownership model, particularly where public land or public funding is involved. Mayors and public authorities can use these levers to incentivise the shift.

As commonhold homes become the norm, market forces will reinforce the transition. Buyers will gravitate towards ownership models that offer clarity, and existing leasehold blocks will come under growing pressure to reform or convert.

Where leasehold remains in place during this transition, it should operate within much tighter boundaries. Ground rent should be set at a true peppercorn rate, and service charges must be transparent, subject to open and genuinely competitive tendering –  clearly linked to actual costs.

One reform is particularly overdue. Managing agents should be banned from taking commissions from contractors or insurers, a practice that inflates costs, distorts competition and undermines trust. Where agents are commercially linked to contractors or other interested parties, this represents a clear conflict that must be ended.

Facing the Pushback and Showing Courage

There will be resistance, often framed around concerns that reform could deter investment or slow housebuilding, but this increasingly ignores reality. Confidence in leasehold is already through the floor, with buyers reluctant, lenders cautious and developers hesitating to build. Preserving an outdated and unfair system simply entrenches a damaging generational and asset divide.

Others will argue that commonhold is untested or risky, yet it has operated successfully in other jurisdictions for decades and can do so here if supported by clear rules and ongoing reform.

A housing market that traps people in homes they own only on paper undermines trust, mobility and productivity, while a society that blocks younger generations from ownership risks breeding resentment and disengagement. Home ownership has long been one of conservatism’s strongest pillars, fostering responsibility, stability and pride in place.

Conservatives must now champion this cause, show courage, and push the Labour government to fully introduce leasehold reforms. This is an opportunity to once again lead the political agenda.

We must seize this moment.