Leasehold and Freehold Bill
The stated aim of the Bill is to promote fairness in the housing market. It seeks to do this in a few ways:
- Reducing the cost and hassle for homeowners to acquire their freehold, extend their lease or exercise their right to manage.
- Increasing the standard leasehold term extension from 90 to 990 years and reduce ground rents to £0.
- Removing the two-year requirement before a tenant can exercise its right to acquire its freehold or lease extension.
- Increasing the 25% non-residential limit to 50%.
- Requiring the provision of prescribed landlord information within a set period and for a set fee.
- Requiring transparency around service changes and extend the redress scheme so it will cover more landlords.
- Homeowners that live in a mixed tenure or private estates will be given the same protections as leaseholders.
- Terminating the presumption for leaseholders to pay landlord's costs when challenging poor service.
- Ensuring freeholders and developers observe their obligations to fund building remediation work by introducing protective measures to ensure the Building Safety Act operates as it is intended.
- Introducing a ban on the creation of new leasehold homes save in "exceptional circumstances".
- Introducing a consultation on a cap on existing ground rents.
Renters (Reform) Bill
Some of the amendments to the Bill include:
- Committing to abolish no fault evictions, introduce stronger grounds for landlords seeking possession and establish a streamlined court process.
- Introducing additional powers to deal with anti-social tenants.
- Introducing a right for tenants to request a pet which a landlord cannot unreasonably refuse.
- Providing for the creation of a digital Private Rented Property Portal for those in the PRS sector (landlords, tenants, Councils)
- Protections for the student market and those in receipt of benefits or that have families.
- Enhanced power for dealing with criminal landlords and introducing protection for those in the PRS
The government has also stated its commitment to:
- Speeding up the court process to enable landlords to regain possession of their property; and
- Scrapping a commitment for landlords to meet EPC C rating or above from 2025.
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises Bill)
The Bill supporting Martyn's law will be subject to a further consultation to ensure that it strikes a balance between protection and the administrative burden and cost falling on smaller operators.
Source: THE KING’S SPEECH 2023, 7 November 2023
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