Sir Peter Bottomley, Father of the House and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold and commonhold reform, has asked judge Sir Keith Lindblom (above), the court of appeal judge who heads the tribunal service, his views on controversial property manager Richard Davidoff continuing as an officer of the court.
Property Tribunal judge Siobhan McGrath has informed LKP that Mr Davidoff has two further roles as a court-appointed property manager – “as far as I can ascertain” – but appears powerless to do anything about them.
Martin Boyd’s mirth at the ‘long-term custodians’: freehold investors being lumped together with developers in the monthly government cladding remediation data dumps only signals that they control everything but pay for nothing in a block of flats and are little more than an investment asset class in other people’s homes
By Harry Scoffin
Bad advice on the effectiveness of sprinkler systems in the years running up to the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy and a failure at government level to build an open and trustworthy data ecosystem for the sharing and accumulation of even basic information concerning the country’s blocks of flats have culminated in the “utter chaos” that we see in today’s leasehold flats market, where sales have plummeted 60 per cent in just three years, was the message of LKP chair Martin Boyd in a speech to the Open Data Institute last month.
The Labour shadow housing brief has passed from Mike Amesbury (MP, Weaver Vale) to Matthew Pennycook (MP, Greenwich and Woolwich).
Mr Amesbury takes over the shadow role for local government.
Leaseholders – and LKP – have a lot to thank Mike Amesbury. He has been an indefatigable advocate for home buyers ripped off by doubling ground rents and the unjustifiable spread of leasehold houses – which were particularly prevalent in the North West.
