More than 50% of homes in the Sheffield Heeley constituency are trapped in the feudal leasehold system since 2010, making the constituency within the top 50 areas in the country.

Ahead of Second Reading of the Leasehold Reform Bill in the Commons today (29 November), the House of Commons Library analysis of Land Registry data shows the scale of the leasehold scandal over the last 10 years.

Leasehold is when people buy a house, without also owning the freehold, meaning they often face unexpected, unfair costs with no right of challenge or recourse.

The new legislation to reduce ground rents to zero will only apply to new homes, meaning all those who have been sold leasehold homes since the Conservatives came to power will continue to be trapped in this feudal system, and developers will continue to make profit off leaseholders’ ground rents for years into the future.

Lease holding and ground rent is an outdated practice where some house buyers are forced to pay thousands of pounds each year to a company which owns the land their property is on, with usually nothing in return.

The government should be using this opportunity to apply this legislation retrospectively so that all homeowners will benefit. That is what Labour would do. The government should also be delivering on their manifesto promise to ban all new leasehold properties which was made in 2017 and recommitted to in 2019. The legislation in its current form is a huge, missed opportunity to help existing leaseholders.

It’s curious to see that residents in the Prime Ministers own constituency will not be hit as hard as those in my constituency, or residents across Sheffield.

This Tory government are once again leaving Sheffield homeowners high and dry.