LEASE is also under attack for failing to address the issue of leasehold forfeiture.
LEASE happily tells freehold owners how to forfeit a lease, but does not tell leaseholders how to preserve their home.
Nigel Wilkins, of the Campaign Against Residential Leasehold, who has been urging that forfeiture be ended, has written to LEASE chief executive Anthony Essien demanding action.
“Since this is such a serious and frightening issue for leaseholders, I really think it is well beyond the time that LEASE provided a legal opinion for leaseholders on how to tackle it.
“You provide full information to landlords about how to forfeit leaseholders’ homes so it is incumbent on you to provide full information to leaseholders about how to combat it. In fact it is highly questionable whether the legislation that permits forfeiture complies with the Human Rights Act or common law.”
Wilkins quotes the cases of ‘Regina v Waya’, the prosecution of a mortgage fraudster where it was ruled that the guilty party only had to forfeit that portion of the capital gain from the property directly attributable to the mortgage fraudulently obtained – and not that part of the capital gain relating to the part of the purchase price that was legitimately funded.
The ruling states: “The legislative purpose of a confiscation order was to deprive a criminal of the proceeds of his crime and not to act as a deterrent by imposing a further punishment.
“Therefore confiscation order should not be disproportionate to the benefit that a criminal derived from his criminal activity.”
As Wilkins points out: “So leaseholders are being treated far worse than criminals when it comes to forfeiture. Moreover any debts due are purely civil debts, and not a result of theft.
“As we all know a large proportion of the “debts” owed by leaseholders arise because of theft and incompetence by landlords, managing agents and others – the so-called “professionals”.”
Curiously, forfeiture as an issue was considered by new ARMA-Q regulator Keith Hill, when he was housing minister. He admits “kicking it into the long grass” by referring forfeiture to the Law Commission.
Forfeiture is very nasty and an anomaly. As readers of LKP know, Battersea leasehold owner Dennis Jackson came within a hair’s breadth of forfeiting the lease on his £800,000 flat at Plantation Wharf.
During the Wandsworth County Court case to lift the forfeiture order Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd, of LKP, were ordered from the court after the freeholder’s barrister objected to their presence.
This meant that Jackson’s entire wealth could have been taken from him in a secret court.
Why is this not a national scandal?
CARL can be contacted here: http://www.carl.org.uk
Related posts:
Council of Mortgage Lenders urged to help LKP end forfeiture
Sunday Times reports the forfeiture scandal of Dennis Jackson at Plantation Wharf
Plantation Wharf pensioner wins 28-day reprieve on forfeiture
Plantation Wharf leasehold pensioner has forfeiture order on his £800,000 flat
Leasehold pensioner reprieved from forfeiture … but the legal bill is £76,000 and rising
Yes, that is just one example of how unfair forfeiture — Dennis Jackson could have had his £800,000
flat taken from him because he was said to have owed under a quarter of what his flat is worth.
Where would you see this being practiced outside of leasehold?
On a repression, they will sell the property and only the amount owing plus legal fees will be deducted,
why has forfeiture not been banned it is worse than illegal lone sharks?!
The simple answer is
1 don’t breach your lease eg let or alter without consent
2 pay if billed and query ( in a recordabel way, if you have a question
3 where you disagree, learn and exercise your rights rather than let a LL inititate proceedings.
All of which LEASE will and do help individuals with, they are not the business of creating a “whiners charter” and clearly explain the process and rights in their website.
Far too often legitimate concerns are undermined and opportunities missed by flat owners relying on common sense ( and often entirely made up) assertions of what they think their rights are or what they think they should be, and not what they actually are.
LHA: With all due respect, forfeiture is an absurdity and wrong. It should be ended as a means to resolve leasehold disputes. Repossession is reasonable: the debts owed and established in court are paid; the monies remaining (if any) go to the leaseholder.
ARMA, ALEP and virtually every lawyer I have spoken to regards forfeiture as wrong. (I and Martin Boyd were thrown out of Wandsworth County Court when the lifting of a forfeiture order was heard: so Dennis Jackson faced losing his £800,000 flat in secret. I was thrown out as “press” and Boyd was Jackson’s lay advisor. I have yet to encounter an informed opinion that is not astonished by this.)
Some leaseholders are falling into forfeiture unwittingly: heirs to retirement leasehold flats, for example. Others, like Jackson are so broken by their LVT experiences, that they stick their heads in the sand and give up. Had he not – indirectly – got in touch with LKP, he would have certainly lost his flat.
In the event, it was saved and his ill-fated defiance over £7,500 in service charges will cost him about £200,000.
I did respond to this but it seems to have been “declined” or is awaiting moderation?