I’m trapped in a leasehold flat with a £3,000 service charge – it was my worst decision

W hen a leaflet about leasehold injustice landed on Cath Williams’ doorstep in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, nearly a decade ago, she barely gave it a second thought, tossing it straight into the bin. Had she given it more than a cursory glance, she’d have read about how residents on her new-build estate had found out the leaseholds for their homes had been sold without their knowledge, which could cost them all thousands of pounds. “Sometimes you get things through the door and you go, ‘what are they on about?’” recalls the 69-year-old retired university lecturer. It was of no interest to her. Or so she thought.

Williams hadn’t realised her home was leasehold when she decided to buy it. It was never mentioned in any promotional material, she says, and the word “leasehold” was only later added to her paperwork in pencil by an estate agent four weeks before her move in date – by then she had already paid her deposit and it was too late to back out. Her unease about what this would mean built over time and it soon became clear it would be a huge headache for her: any alterations to her home would require paying the leaseholder an ever-increasing permission fee, the property would decrease in value as the lease got shorter, and the ground rent could increase drastically over time. Ultimately, it could leave her trapped and unable to sell her home.

When she bought her home, Williams said she was told she could easily buy her lease for about £2,000 after two years of living there, becoming the freeholder. But when she tried to do so, she was told the price had increased to £11,500. “I was mis-sold, in my opinion, because it just wasn’t explained at all. And it was just so unfair,” she said. “That’s when I decided I had to speak out.”

Nine years on, Williams – along with fellow campaigners Katie Kendrick, a 46-year-old paediatric nurse, and Jo Darbyshire, a 56-year-old business director – has helped push through the biggest ever overhaul of the centuries-old leasehold system, a seismic change that has exposed the cruel injustices of the practice. Last year they were awarded OBEs from King Charles for their work, and they regularly travel to parliament to speak to ministers, representing the now 34,000-strong National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) they set up. Their work paved the way towards a ban on new leasehold houses, and towards a commonhold system for new flats, meaning buyers will own the freehold of their property while collectively owning and managing the rest of the building with neighbours.

“It is amazing to think we’re now on our third piece of legislation and it wouldn’t have happened if us three stubborn, northern working mums hadn’t kicked off all them years ago,” says Kendrick, whose plan for a kitchen extension triggered the events that led to the law change. Kendrick lived just a few streets away from Williams and her home was also leasehold – all new-build homes in the north-west at the time were, and using the government’s former help-to-buy scheme gave her no choice but to buy a new-build. Under leasehold rules, she would have to pay a £300 permission fee to her freeholder to apply for the extension. But within two years of buying the house, the freehold was sold by the property developer without her knowledge, and the permission fee increased to £3,000. Even worse, the price for her to buy the freehold herself had increased by 600%, from £2,000 to £14,000. That was when she had her “penny drop moment”.

“I just thought this cannot be right, how is this allowed?” she says. Kendrick set up a Facebook group for Ellesmere Port residents and started handing out leaflets, including the one that landed on Williams’ doorstep. Soon people from across the country were joining their group – according to 2017 research , an estimated 100,000 homeowners were trapped in a property made unsellable by leasehold.

Many of these faced extortionate charges for ground rent – an annual fee paid by leaseholders to freeholders for the land beneath their home, often criticised as money given for nothing. That included Darbyshire, who lived in Bolton in a leasehold home where the cost of buying her freehold had increased from £5,000 to £40,000, and the ground rent was set to double every 10 years.

“The developers just got really greedy – it was outrageous and it got a lot of traction in the press,” says Kendrick. “We opened up Pandora’s box because then Grenfell happened, so there was the fallout from that and who pays for the building safety stuff – more and more leaseholders were realising, ‘oh my God, this impacts us’. Even now, every single day, more people are joining the NLC because it’s often not until people come to sell that they realise the issues.” They began organising mass email campaigns to MPs and orchestrated a big demonstration outside parliament, hiring an open-top London bus plastered with their slogans – “Re-Lease Me!” and, their main message, “Leasehold is NOT home ownership”.

In 2018, this led to a select…