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