When a leaflet about leasehold injustice landed on Cath Williams' doorstep in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, nearly a decade ago, she barely gave it a second thought, tossing it straight into the bin. Had she given it more than a cursory glance, she would have read about how residents on her new-build estate had discovered their leaseholds had been sold without their knowledge, potentially costing them thousands of pounds. 'Sometimes you get things through the door and you go, what are they on about?' recalls the 69-year-old retired university lecturer. It was of no interest to her. Or so she thought.
Williams had not realised her home was leasehold when she decided to buy it. It was never mentioned in any promotional material, she says, and the word 'leasehold' was only later added to her paperwork in pencil by an estate agent four weeks before her move-in date. By then she had already paid her deposit, and it was too late to back out. Her unease about what this would mean built over time, and it soon became clear it would be a huge headache: any alterations to her home would require paying the leaseholder an ever-increasing permission fee, the property would decrease in value as the lease got shorter, and the ground rent could increase drastically over time. Ultimately, it could leave her trapped and unable to sell her home.
When she bought her home, Williams said she was told she could easily buy her lease for about £2,000 after two years of living there, becoming the freeholder. But when she tried to do so, she was told the price had increased to £11,500. 'I was mis-sold, in my opinion, because it just wasn't explained at all. And it was just so unfair,' she said. 'That's when I decided I had to speak out.'
The Campaign Takes Shape
Nine years on, Williams, along with fellow campaigners Katie Kendrick, a 46-year-old paediatric nurse, and Jo Darbyshire, a 56-year-old business director, has helped push through the biggest ever overhaul of the centuries-old leasehold system, a seismic change that has exposed the cruel injustices of the practice. Last year they were awarded OBEs from King Charles for their work, and they regularly travel to parliament to speak to ministers, representing the now 34,000-strong National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) they set up. Their work paved the way towards a ban on new leasehold houses and towards a commonhold system for new flats, meaning buyers will own the freehold of their property while collectively owning and managing the rest of the building with neighbours.
'It is amazing to think we're now on our third piece of legislation and it wouldn't have happened if us three stubborn, northern working mums hadn't kicked off all them years ago,' says Kendrick, whose plan for a kitchen extension triggered the events that led to the law change. Kendrick lived just a few streets away from Williams, and her home was also leasehold. All new-build homes in the north-west at the time were, and using the government's former help-to-buy scheme gave her no choice but to buy a new-build. Under leasehold rules, she would have to pay a £300 permission fee to her freeholder to apply for the extension. But within two years of buying the house, the freehold was sold by the property developer without her knowledge, and the permission fee increased to £3,000. Even worse, the price for her to buy the freehold herself had increased by 600%, from £2,000 to £14,000. That was when she had her 'penny drop moment'.
'I just thought this cannot be right, how is this allowed?' she says. Kendrick set up a Facebook group for Ellesmere Port residents and started handing out leaflets, including the one that landed on Williams' doorstep. Soon people from across the country were joining their group. According to 2017 research, an estimated 100,000 homeowners were trapped in a property made unsellable by leasehold. Many faced extortionate charges for ground rent, an annual fee paid by leaseholders to freeholders for the land beneath their home, often criticised as money given for nothing. That included Darbyshire, who lived in Bolton in a leasehold home where the cost of buying her freehold had increased from £5,000 to £40,000, and the ground rent was set to double every 10 years.
Political Momentum Builds
'The developers just got really greedy. It was outrageous and it got a lot of traction in the press,' says Kendrick. 'We opened up Pandora's box because then Grenfell happened, so there was the fallout from that and who pays for the building safety stuff. More and more leaseholders were realising, oh my God, this impacts us. Even now, every single day, more people are joining the NLC because it's often not until people come to sell that they realise the issues.' They began organising mass email campaigns to MPs and orchestrated a big demonstration outside parliament, hiring an open-top London bus plastered with their slogans: 'Re-Lease Me!' and their main message, 'Leasehold is NOT home ownership'.
In 2018, this led to a select committee inquiry which received a record amount of evidence, with more than 6,000 responses. Political momentum grew, with their breakthrough coming in 2022: The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act, which legislated to end ground rents for most new residential leasehold properties in England and Wales. 'I actually sat there and thought, no one else will have to go through what I've been through. And we made that happen,' says Darbyshire. 'That was quite a moment for me. That was the point where I thought: oh, we can do this.'
Since then, leasehold reform has gathered serious traction. Last year, the housing minister, Matthew Pennycook, promised to abolish the 'feudal' leasehold system in England and Wales before the end of this parliament and make all new flats commonhold. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act passed in 2024, ensuring the standard lease extension term (which often costs thousands to renew) will be increased to 990 years, and the need to own a property for two years before extending a lease or buying the freehold will be scrapped. It will also abolish 'marriage value' (an extra fee for extending a lease with less than 80 years remaining) and introduce a standard format for service charges from management companies. Then, in January 2026, came the draft commonhold and leasehold reform bill, seen as the final nail in the coffin for leasehold. It will ban the sale of new leasehold flats and cap ground rents on current leases at £250 a year, reduced to zero after 40 years.
Resistance and Remaining Challenges
These are all big changes, being furiously resisted by freeholders who have already begun launching legal challenges, arguing that caps on ground rent risk devaluing their assets and making some of them insolvent. They also argued that abolishing marriage value breached their rights to the 'peaceful enjoyment of property' under the European convention on human rights, though the case was dismissed by the high court. For campaigners, the changes do not go far enough and do little to help people stuck in perilous positions now. The 2024 act still has not been fully enacted yet. 'Currently, nothing has changed for existing leaseholders. We have had all the headlines and all the we're going to do this, we're going to do that,' says Kendrick. 'But actually on this day, nothing has changed for those currently trapped in it. Everything is looking to the future.'
All three women have now managed to buy the freeholds for their properties and are no longer trapped in the financial nightmare which brought them to the issue in the first place, but they have no plans to walk away. 'We're going to see this through to the end. There's too many people out there who need help,' says Kendrick. 'Some people are in a really, really dire situation. There have been times when people have contacted me because they've wanted to take their own lives and I've had to spend hours on the telephone to them.' A recent survey they carried out of 2,362 leaseholders found that 41% had experienced suicidal thoughts, and one in five had experienced thoughts of self-harm. 'I know it's dramatic, but people are dying, either through stress-related illness related to leasehold or by suicide,' says Williams.
Ongoing Issues and Personal Sacrifices
Times have changed since the trio launched their campaign. The proportion of new-build houses sold as leasehold dropped from a peak of 15% in 2016 to less than 1% by December 2022. Leasehold flats, and their extortionate service charges and poorly run management companies, are dominating the headlines now. The behaviour of FirstPort, one of Britain's biggest property managers, has come under fire from the housing minister after residents complained of high service charges, slow repairs and aggressive debt collection techniques. In one case in Manchester, which was raised in parliament by MPs, several flats were left uninhabitable after FirstPort failed to fix the roof for years, despite residents spending thousands on legal fees. (In response to numerous complaints from leaseholders, FirstPort said it had invested in improving its systems, customer service and training over the last year.)
Across the country people have reported their annual service charge soaring after moving in, with some having to take on extra jobs or take out loans to keep up with the payments, and then being unable to sell the property. Last year, the average annual service charge for a leasehold flat in England and Wales rose by 11% to £2,300. In some cases management companies are hiking prices but doing no work, while people have been forced out of their flats due to mould or collapsed ceilings caused by leaks that have not been fixed and which they have no control over. In other cases, management companies have issued huge bills for thousands of pounds for major works which take years to materialise and leave homeowners trapped. 'I'm not convinced that even from a legislative point of view we've grappled with this yet,' says Darbyshire. 'Basically, all the legislation does now means there's transparency about the fact you're being ripped off by service charges.'
The three women say they are proud of their achievements, but are aware it has taken a toll on their personal lives. All three have had to spend time away from their families and children. 'My son is 14, so for the whole of his life, all he's known is mum's doing leasehold stuff,' says Kendrick. 'I remember when he was a toddler in the car, the George Michael song Freedom came on, and he said Mummy, are they saying freehold? I thought oh my god, I've brainwashed my child.' The trio have formed a strong friendship and say their different personalities and skillsets have made them a formidable team. 'I'm the more impulsive, heart-on-the-sleeve person,' says Kendrick. 'Jo doesn't say a lot, but when she does, she's a ninja, she's lethal.'
The focus now is on getting the promised leasehold reforms enacted before the next general election could upend everything. Pennycook has been accused of 'foot-dragging' amid delays to reforms that he has admitted could extend to 2028. His argument was that a slower rollout would avoid undermining housing supply and legal complications. 'We've had about 15 housing ministers since we've been doing this. It's like a revolving door,' says Kendrick. 'It's been such hard work just to keep morale up because everyone's like, oh, we have to start all over again. We can't let that happen.'
