© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
News on the Block’s regular columnist (and one of the original campaigners back in 1993) adds her own unique take on the enfranchisement landscape and recalls the often difficult path that has led us to where we are today.
Leaseholders’ rights began in 1993 – but did not bring the desired benefits for a further decade.
Before 1993 there was a strictly limited opportunity for the owners of houses and flats, whose landlord was selling the freehold anyway, to a “right of first refusal”. But this feeble law, which was not backed up by any penalties for offenders, ended up more honoured in the breach. Landlords big and small ignored its provisions at will – as did their lawyers.
It was one of these breaches – the sale of the South Kensington Estate by Henry Smith Charity to the Wellcome Trust in 1995 – which brought about the Evening Standard Leasehold Campaign. The sheer scale and horror of the abuses we uncovered daily over a period of weeks caused the Government and Parliament to revisit not only the “right of first refusal” but also the way in which the enfranchisement options granted in the 1993 Act had been undermined by the House of Lords (mainly by Lords with land and property agendas).
The result was the 1996 Act, which improved the ability of leaseholders to resist the tactics of unscrupulous landlords by establishing the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT) as the forum for resolving disputes instead of the expensive and intimidating County Courts. It was followed by the 2002 Act, which completed most of the necessary protection for leaseholders including the crucial Right to Manage and abandonment of the residency test for enfranchisement.
What has surprised me personally more than anything has been the degree to which awareness of all these benefits has been slow to trickle through to the general public. I still get calls from people who have not heard of the Leasehold Advisory Service or even the LVT, although happily there are fewer than in the past.
I hope this special supplement sponsored by Savills will help to further increase leaseholders’ awareness of what they can do to help themselves and why they should do it.
Mira Bar-Hillel