Posted on 27th October, 2025
Will Lease Extensions & Enfranchisements now be cheaper?
Can the Leasehold & Freehold Reform Act 2024 (LFRA 2024) provisions to make lease extensions and freehold purchases cheaper for leaseholders now proceed?
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill completed its journey through parliament on Friday 24th May 2024 and received its Royal Assent and became law. The Act covers a range of subjects including making it easier and cheaper to extend leases and buy the freeholds of residential flats and houses. The provisions relating to lease extensions and freehold purchases (enfranchisement) are however mostly not yet enacted.
There have however been a number of legal challenges made by landlords to the Leasehold & Freehold Reform Act 2024 legislation under Human Rights Legislation. In early February this year, a number of freeholders were granted the right to apply for a Judicial Review to challenge the threat to their income streams posed by the LFRA 2024. The hearing took place in late July 2025 in the High Court. Judgement to this case has just been published on the 24th October 2025 and the government has been successful in defeating the challenges.
The provisions under the challenge were the removal of the marriage value from the lease extension/ freehold purchase calculations, the proposed cap on the ground rents to 0.1% of the freehold value within the lease extension calculations and the proposed limitations upon the landlords’ rights to recover reasonable costs (valuation and legal) from leaseholders. If now enacted these provisions could significantly reduce leaseholder’s costs of lease extensions and freehold purchases particular in cases where the existing leases are under 80 years unexpired or where the ground rent is high with large future increases.
The government can now move forward with enacting these provisions. We expect however there to be a delay until the period within which the freeholders could launch an appeal to the determination has passed. This we believe to be 21 days which will be the 14th November 2025. If there is no appeal, we hope there will be an announcement from the Housing Minister shortly regarding a timetable for enactment. However, the Housing Minister stated in November 2024 that “serious flaws” in the Act needed to be fixed through primary Legislation and that further consultation will be necessary to determine how certain measures are to be implemented.
The circumstances of any particular lease extension or enfranchisement case will determine how large the savings might be if the legislation is enacted. For further information or an initial no obligation consultation with one of Julian Wilkins Chartered Surveyors specialist enfranchisement valuation surveyors please contact us by email or telephone.