Pennycook defends gradual leasehold reform, says instant abolition is impossible

Matthew Pennycook drew a sharp line between Labour’s pledge to end leasehold and the reality facing millions of flat owners in England and Wales. The housing minister said getting rid of leasehold in its entirety would be “almost certainly impossible” because it would mean abolishing around five million leases, with no clear answer on legality, mortgage protection or how the Land Registry would switch titles overnight.

Speaking at the Institute for Government in London on 29 April 2026, Pennycook defended the government’s slower approach as the only workable path to a system long criticised for leaving leaseholders exposed to ground rents, management charges and limited control over their homes. The immediate abolition of leasehold, he argued, is not a practical policy choice but a legal and administrative upheaval that would hit the housing market as well as existing homeowners.

The minister’s remarks come after Labour told voters in its 2024 general election manifesto that it would “finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end.” Since then, the government has published a Commonhold White Paper, on 3 March 2025, setting out how a reformed commonhold model would operate in England and Wales, and then published a draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill in January 2026. Earlier government material had said the bill would be introduced in the second half of 2025, highlighting the delay.

The scale of the challenge is stark. The Law Commission says fewer than 20 commonhold developments have been established since the commonhold legislation came into force, and flats in England and Wales are still owned “almost inevitably” on a leasehold basis. That leaves the government trying to shift a market built on leasehold without destabilising the mortgage system or the title register that underpins home ownership.

Ministers now want commonhold to become the default tenure, new leasehold flats to be banned, and conversion to commonhold to be made easier. The draft bill would also abolish leasehold forfeiture and replace it with a fairer system of lease enforcement, repeal powers over rent charges on freehold estates and cap ground rent on older leases at £250 a year before it falls to a peppercorn after 40 years. The government says more than five million leaseholders and future homeowners should benefit, but for those already trapped in leasehold, the reform still looks distant rather than immediate.