Michael Gove has pledged to bring forward laws to scrap most “feudal” leaseholds in England this year.
Ministers are preparing to ditch rules that bar flat owners from buying the freehold to their property if a small part of their building is given over to commercial use, such as shops.
The government will also make it much easier for leaseholders in flats to take over their buildings and bring them into common ownership to avoid extortionate management fees and ground rents.
Gove told Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News: “We want to introduce legislation in the final parliamentary session — later this calendar year — in order to change the leasehold system.
“It’s not easy in legal terms. When you’ve got a tangle of property laws going back hundreds of years, unstitching all of that is difficult. But the fundamental thing is that leasehold is just an unfair form of property ownership. In crude terms if you buy a flat, that should be yours. You shouldn’t be on the hook for charges which managing agents and other people can land you with.”
Gove described leaseholds as “an outdated feudal system” in an interview with The Sunday Times. The laws were first used more than 150 years ago by large landowners around growing cities to profit from selling houses while keeping ownership and income from the land on which they were built.
Criticism of the rules intensified after the cladding scandal. Many homeowners have faced crippling bills and been unable to sell their properties after buying leasehold flats that the freeholders refuse to make safe.
Evidence given to the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire in west London in June 2017 showed official guidance was widely seen to allow highly flammable cladding on tall buildings.
Gove said of the tragedy, in which 72 people died: “There were lots of factors but yes, government collectively has to take some responsibility.It is undeniably the case that the system of building regulation was not right.”