Conservative Voters Support Contentious Leasehold Reforms

Conservative voters are keen to see ground rents on leasehold properties, despite significant pushback from within the parliamentary party to water down the major reform put forward by housing secretary Michael Gove.

Polling from Opinium seen by PoliticsHome found that 64 per cent of Tory voters were either strongly in favour, or tended to be in favour of abolishing ground rents. Only 17 per cent of Conservative supporters were strongly against or tended to oppose scrapping them.

The results found 61 per cent of Conservative voters who backed the party in 2019 were in favour of removing ground rents compared to 15 per cent who opposed getting rid of them. Tory voters altogether were more supportive of scrapping ground rent compared to Labour voters.

A leaseholder is a tenant who has paid to live in a property for a select period of time, and often includes apparent homeowners. Ground rent is a payment made by the leaseholder to the freeholder for using their home and the land around it. A consultation on ground rents – which closed on 17 January – has been looking into ways to limit the charges which leaseholders pay. The response to the consultation is yet to be published. 

A key part of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill – a major overhaul of centuries old property ownership rules which is currently making its way through parliament – looked at setting ground rents to a peppercorn, which could encourage freeholders to sell their property and leave the market. Capping ground rents to a peppercorn rate is an industry term used to refer to a payment of no financial value. In practice, if ground rents were set to a peppercorn, the leaseholder would not pay any ground rent. 

Opinium's new polling suggested support for