Justice For Property Rights warns the government faces multi-billion-pound legal action over “state-backed asset confiscation”
Campaign group says leasehold reforms threaten investor confidence, pension savings and property rights
Justice For Property Rights has condemned the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s latest leasehold reform report as “tone deaf, politically skewed and economically reckless”, warning that the Government now faces the prospect of major legal action and compensation claims running into the billions of pounds.
The group, which represents property owners, investors and freeholders, confirmed it is working with a major law firm on potential legal challenges relating to what it describes as the “unlawful destruction of long-established property rights.”
The warning follows the Committee’s demand that ministers move “further and faster” on commonhold and leasehold reform - despite what Justice for Property Rights says was a deeply unbalanced inquiry process that excluded small investors, family businesses and ordinary individuals.
Instead, the Committee prioritised evidence from large institutional pension funds and campaign groups, while making what the organisation described as “a political spectacle” of inviting major landed estates and large freeholders, many of whom refused to attend.
Richard Merrin, spokesperson for Justice for Property Rights said: “This inquiry was fundamentally skewed from the outset. The voices of ordinary investors and small business owners were ignored in favour of a politically convenient narrative.
“The result is a report that is economically illiterate, legally dangerous and completely disconnected from the real-world consequences these proposals will have.”
The group warned that the Government’s approach increasingly resembles “asset confiscation masquerading as reform.”
“Correcting genuinely excessive ground rents on low-value flats is one thing. But retrospectively deleting contractual income streams entirely - in some cases with 40 years or less remaining - is something very different.
“That is not reform. That is state-backed expropriation.”
Justice for Property Rights said ministers risk undermining one of Labour leader Keir Starmer’s central election promises - economic stability and respect for business confidence.
“The Government came to power promising moderation, stability and responsible government. Instead, investors are now looking at what increasingly resembles Corbynism by the back door.
“If the Government can simply erase legally purchased property rights because it is politically fashionable, every asset class in Britain becomes vulnerable.”
The organisation also criticised what it called the “complete irrationality” of the Government’s wider property tax agenda.
“We now have situations where multi-million-pound apartments in prime London locations are seeing their ground rents reduced to peppercorn levels - effectively underwritten by taxpayers - while the same Government prepares additional taxation measures aimed at high-value property owners.
“This is madness. On one hand the state destroys legitimate contractual value, and on the other it seeks to tax the same assets even more aggressively.”
Justice for Property Rights confirmed that legal action is now becoming central to the campaign’s strategy and suggested the prospect of substantial compensation liabilities could become a major political pressure point for the Government.
“The legal issues here are profound. Investors acquired these assets lawfully, transparently and under long-established property frameworks.
“If the Government proceeds with effectively confiscating those rights without proper compensation, the taxpayer could ultimately face liabilities running into billions of pounds.”
The group said it supports proportionate reforms that improve transparency and consumer protection, but warned that ideologically driven policymaking risks destabilising investment, reducing housing delivery and severely damaging confidence in the UK’s legal and property systems.
Notes to editors
Justice for Property Rights is a newly established campaign created to represent small-scale property investors, retirees, shared freeholders and other individuals with lawful existing interests in residential freeholds.
The campaign supports proportionate leasehold reform and the development of commonhold as a long-term alternative.
It is focused on ensuring that reforms distinguish between abusive practices and legitimate, long-standing arrangements.
The group is particularly concerned about the potential retrospective impact of proposed changes on individuals who invested in good faith under existing legal frameworks.
· The Government's own English Housing Survey 2023-24 found that 77% of leasehold owner occupiers were very satisfied with their tenure - with the combined very and fairly satisfied figure reaching over 90%.
* £37.5B comes from the 2023 Treasury Impact Assessment. To date, the government has refused to provide how they arrived at these figures as they seem understated.
See: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/163042/html/