Friday lunchtime lecture: How we made 2.1 million homes appear

Leasehold Knowledge Partnership's (LKP) data journey began in 2014 when they discovered that the government estimate of about 2 million leasehold homes in England and Wales was totally wrong. In the first half of 2014 they worked with the government to allow them to agree a new "official" estimate of 4.1 million privately owned leasehold homes in England as at 2012/13. The data in this sector has been so poor in the past that fundamental misconceptions have been allowed to develop. The government believed leasehold was somehow a lower cost form of tenure. They thought that almost 50% of properties were overseen by regulated professional property managers. We now know that leasehold construction has grown to become almost 50% of all new housing stock. Martin and Sebastian, Trustees of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, explain how the unreliable data came about and how this has meant until recently many of our housing policies have been predicated on entirely false assumptions. The journey to uncovering much of the detailed leasehold data is ongoing and will need the support of the Land Registry and others. About the speakers Both Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd act as Trustees of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and now also act as the Secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Leasehold and Commonhold reform. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is a charity incubated by the ODI.