November 11, 2024

Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation welcomes Lord Best’s ‘flaws and all’ study of retirement housing

The controversial issues surrounding retirement housing have been addressed in an important parliamentary report written by Lord Best, the acknowledged expert on the subject in the Lords. “Leaseholders and their concerns have not been forgotten in this report,” Lord Best told guests at Parliament on Wednesday, who included senior figures in housebuilding, housing associations, the […]

Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation tells Parliament: ‘feeling in retirement leasehold is that the bad guys always win’

Last Wednesday saw a session of Lord Best’s All Party Parliamentary Group on retirement housing and care. Sebastian O’Kelly, trustee of Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation / LKP, made the following points about private leasehold retirement housing to the APPG: In part, the elderly are not downsizing to retirement housing because they think they will […]

Housing and Care 21: We’ve made a mess at Ashfield, so manage the site yourselves

Housing and Care 21 handed over the management to residents at Ashfield, a retirement site in Telford in Shropshire, after admitting that it had been badly run. For the past three months, the complex of 26 semi and detached bungalows with a community centre and flat above has been self-managed by the residents through a […]

Will Lord Best’s proposals produce a healthy retirement housing market …

… Or help perpetuate what is already wrong with it?   – Government should underwrite retirement flat purchases like Help To Buy scheme – There should not be any stamp duty when downsizing – Schemes where some service charges are deferred until a property is sold should be ‘made available more widely’ – Retirement accommodation offers huge savings over maintaining […]

Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation / LKP holds Westminster meeting on commonhold

Last Thursday (June 26) Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation / the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership held an all-party meeting on commonhold in the House of Commons. The meeting was organised by Martin Boyd, co-director of LKP, and hosted by MPs Ed Davey (LibDem), Sir Peter Bottomley (Conservative) and Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour). More than 50 delegates attended […]

What are Lord Best’s ‘modest proposals’ for leaseholders?

Chairman of the Hanover Housing Association Lord Best has “a number of relatively modest reforms which would make a difference to leaseholders’ lives”. Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation has contacted the cross-bench peer to discover what these might be. Lord Best has held a meeting of peers interested in leasehold issues. He referred to his […]