What did Labour actually promise on leasehold?
There's this weird idea about, that the UK Labour party promised to end "leasehold". That's not what they've actually been saying, and is not logically compatible with what they stated in their manifesto before they won this year's election.
Labour didn't say they'd end leasehold; they said they'd end the leasehold *system*, which can't be the same thing. (Their manifesto proposed making commonhold the default tenure, not the sole tenure, for flats, necessarily implying that leasehold would remain as an alternative to this default)
When I pointed this out on Twitter, some had the temerity to object that Labour had "pledged" well before the election to abolish leasehold, and then walked it back before their manifesto was even published. I really think we need to take those claims with a pinch of salt, though beneath it all is a disagreement about how to characterise the "small print" in political rhetoric.
It's not really been possible to stand up this "pledge"; it has three possible referents I've been able to track down:
- Lisa Nandy said on Sky News (23 May 2023) that Labour would ban leasehold, but that this meant banning it on new builds, and reform commonhold for existing flats (rather than mandate it)
- On Question Time on 27 April that year she had said the government *should* ban leasehold, and that the next government would do "something" about it
- There is also a third broadcast piece I've never been able to find again where she's much more explicit about banning leasehold for "private" flats (i.e., retain it for social housing, council housing and shared ownership)
None of this adds up to a promise to ban leasehold. We should also be cautious about unscripted remarks on the telly, rather than what is written. The best guides to party policy on leasehold is actually the formal ministerial statements read into the record of Parliament; there have been two recent ones, on behalf of Robert Jenrick and Matthew Pennycook (former and current Cabinet ministers with responsibility for leasehold).
I've done some analysis of the more recent statement from the new Labour minister insofar as it relates to the recently enacted legislation, which I'll summarise on Gemini shortly. But it's available on Google Docs here: