Housing secretary Robert Jenrick said there was no place for unfair practices
Flats are often sold as leaseholds with the freehold held by a separate owner, often the builder, who is entitled to charge ground rent to the homeowner.Housing secretary Robert Jenrick said unfair practices such as crippling ground rents have"no place in our housing market". He added:"The government is pursuing the most significant reforms to leasehold in forty years, including by protecting future homeowners, restricting ground rents in new leases to zero and ending the use of leasehold in new houses altogether."It said it stopped selling leases containing ten-year doubling ground rent clauses on new developments from January 2012 and set aside £130m to cover the cost of conversions for customers to inflation-linked leases.
Countryside said in a statement:"Countryside has sold no properties with doubling ground rent clauses since 2017 and we introduced the Ground Rent Assistance Scheme in 2020 to assist leaseholders whose ground rents doubled more frequently than every 20 years."