Angus Fanshawe

@jeremycorbyn The problem is builders aren’t building at the moment as it’s not worth their while. More regulations and demands mean even less building. How does that help anyone?

Rent controls and council housing. That’s how you fix the housing crisis.

From a lettings agent viewpoint. The Private Rental crisis….. ‘Much of the frustration centres on the Renters' Rights legislation, with agents reporting that many landlords are choosing to sell ahead of the new rules taking effect.’ share.google/M1uY5GsccAlJIP…

A struggling seaside town will not die overnight. It dies gradually by wrong decisions made in warm council offices far removed from the cold reality of the high street. Every year, the excuses are the same: parking charges must rise, roads must be changed, more restrictions are needed, and more money must be taken from the people already struggling to survive. Meanwhile, the local shopkeeper watches another customer drive past because they cannot justify paying a small fortune simply to park for half an hour.For many independent businesses, every customer matters. A florist, a café, a second-hand bookshop, a family-run butcher — they rely on people being able to stop, park easily, spend a little money, and leave without feeling punished. Yet councils seem determined to treat motorists as enemies rather than customers. Parking charges have become less about managing traffic and more about milking revenue from people who have no choice but to drive. Families think twice before visiting. Elderly residents stay away altogether. Visitors head elsewhere to out-of-town retail parks where parking is free, and access is easy.Then come the grand schemes. Roads that worked perfectly well for decades are turned into confusing one-way systems that force drivers around endless detours, causing congestion where none existed before. Journeys that should take two minutes take ten. Deliveries become harder. Shoppers give up. Businesses suffer.Cycle lanes are painted onto roads at huge expense, often in places where barely anyone uses them. Entire parking bays disappear to create empty strips of tarmac that sit deserted for most of the day while nearby shops struggle to survive. The council calls it progress. The people who actually live there call it common sense being thrown out of the window.A small seaside town should be easy to visit, easy to park in, and welcoming to families, pensioners, tourists and local residents alike. Instead, many are becoming places where it feels as though the council is actively trying to drive people away.The tragedy is that once the independent shops close, they rarely come back. Empty units multiply. Charity shops replace butchers. Betting shops replace bakeries. The town centre loses its character, its charm and eventually its purpose.A seaside town is not destroyed by storms or by bad luck. It is destroyed by years of short-sighted decisions made by people who never seem to understand that if you make it harder, more expensive and more frustrating for people to visit a town, eventually they simply stop coming and travel to large shopping centres out of town.

@NRLAssociation @BeadleBen Focussing on trying to find a single thing good about this legislation

📢 Renters’ Rights changes are coming The landlords who stay ahead are the ones who prepare early, act on what they learn, and build reliable processes. In a changing sector, preparation builds confidence. What are you focusing on right now? 👇

@Planet_F1 He might get a better company car

Is Jonathan Wheatley swapping Audi for Aston Martin? Statement from Audi. [Link in first comment]

@LBHF Could you add some context here. Saving of £10,000pa which is great. What did it cost to install, and so how long to repay the cost? Normally payback is around 6-10 years. Would be interesting to find out.

Wendell Park School in Shepherds Bush is set to save thousands of pounds on its energy bills - thanks to 100 new solar panels on its roof. The installation is already generating electricity and is expected to save the school more than £10,000 a year on energy bills.

F1 2026 prediction time: 1. Russell 2. Verstappen 3. Leclerc 4. Hamilton 5. Antonelli 6. Piastri 7. Norris 8. Hadjar 9. Sainz 10. Albon Could this be the year when we have three Brits on the podium? Will be the first time since 1968 (Stewart/Hill/Clark)

Dubai just shut down. The busiest international airport on earth. Closed. Indefinitely. Dubai International and Al Maktoum International both suspended all operations on February 28 per official Dubai Airports statement. Over 280 flights canceled. 250 more delayed. The airspace that handles more international passengers than any hub on the planet went dark this morning because Iranian ballistic missiles were flying through it. Now read the airline list and understand the scale of what just broke. Emirates. Grounded. Etihad. Grounded. Qatar Airways. Suspended all flights to and from Doha after Qatari airspace closed. Air India. Every single flight to every destination in the entire Middle East. Suspended indefinitely. Turkish Airlines. Suspended flights to Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, Qatar, and the UAE until at least March 2. Lufthansa. Dubai suspended. Air France. Tel Aviv and Beirut suspended. Wizz Air. Israel, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Amman suspended until March 7. British Airways. Affected. Virgin Atlantic. Affected. Japan Airlines. Affected. Norwegian Air, LOT Polish, Scandinavian Airlines, Aegean, Iberia, Air Arabia, PIA, Saudia, Air Algerie. All affected. All grounded or rerouting. This is not a regional disruption. This is the global aviation network breaking at one of its most critical nodes. Dubai is not just an airport. It is the single largest connecting hub between Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Every flight from Mumbai to London, from Singapore to Frankfurt, from Nairobi to New York that routes through the Gulf is now either canceled, delayed, or burning extra fuel on thousand-mile detours around closed airspace. IndiGo just suspended flights to Almaty, Baku, Tashkent, and Tbilisi until March 28. Not March 2. March 28. A month of Central Asian connectivity erased because Iranian missiles crossed the flight paths. The cost is compounding by the hour. Rerouted flights burn more fuel when oil is spiking past 100 dollars a barrel because the same conflict that closed the airspace is threatening the strait that moves 21 million barrels a day. Airlines are paying surge prices for fuel to fly longer routes around a war zone that did not exist yesterday morning. Every hour the airspace stays closed, the losses multiply across carriers already operating on thin margins. And here is what nobody is calculating yet. Dubai’s economy runs on connectivity. Tourism. Trade. Finance. Logistics. All of it depends on DXB being open. The UAE just absorbed an act of war on its sovereign territory with a civilian killed in Abu Dhabi from missile debris. The country that built its entire economic model on being the safe, neutral, connected hub of the Middle East is now closed for business because the country it had no quarrel with fired missiles through its airspace. Iran did not just attack military bases this morning. Iran shut down the economic engine of the Gulf. That is a cost Tehran cannot afford to repay and the UAE will not forget.

@ClausVistesen @UKLabour This little nugget from a House of Commons Library article "Leasehold reform in England and Wales" gives a clue to the delay ‘The consultation has been delayed due to legal challenges from groups of freeholders. The High Court dismissed the legal challenges on 24 October 2025

The @UKLabour government, when challenged on the slow speed and limited scope of leasehold reform, has no good answers on why it is not, as promised, moving at pace. There is a solution for that ... get on with it!

A possible fair solution. If those on Plan B student loans pay an interest rate that's RPI + 3%, the threshold when they start paying off the loan should also increase by the same amount. @KemiBadenoch @MartinSLewis

@moving_charlie @HarryScoffin @LovellPropguru Thanks Charlie. Undoing leasehold is a non starter. You can’t force 5m l/holders to rewrite their contracts. Bring in Commonhold for new buildings if it’s better but not retrospectively. (impressed you remember something I said 20 mins ago let alone 20 yrs)

You’ve been pushing for 999 year leases with Share of Freehold? Does that mean you have some overlapping area of agreement with @AngusFanshawe on this? If so, should you explore this direction more if it could result in an easier outcome? (Angus, I’ll never forget you saying that the undoing of leasehold would be like trying to untangle a Gordian knot! Must have been 20 years ago).

An interesting argument from a leasehold expert (a genuine one!) on the pros and cons of common hold. I think it’s clutching at straws slightly, but still bears consideration. “There seems to be a fundamental flaw in Commonhold that must be overcome for it to succeed. Hopefully, this can be addressed at the Committee stage next month. Part of my submission here: A purchaser of a flat requires clarity, stability, and certainty in the rights and obligations they acquire. Under the traditional leasehold system, a purchaser receives a fixed, legally binding contract (a lease) that clearly sets out the terms under which they own and occupy their flat. This lease cannot be altered (except by a Tribunal in exceptional circumstances) and provides the foundation for long‑term ownership of the flat. A flat with a 999-year lease and a share in the company that owns the freehold of the building provides exactly that long-term security. By contrast, when purchasing a Commonhold unit, the buyer acquires the freehold title to their flat and also membership in the Commonhold Association.  However, the governing document (the Commonhold Community Statement) can be amended through a majority vote of other unit owners. A buyer can find that the rights, obligations, restrictions, or financial commitments attached to their flat can change without their consent simply by a majority vote in the building. This gives a buyer no security in the flat they are buying. This inherent uncertainty is my central objection to Commonhold. A buyer cannot fully know the future obligations they are taking on, nor the extent to which a majority of their neighbours may redefine the rules or impose additional rules or costs. Under a 999-year lease and ‘share of freehold’ there is certainty provided. Under the new Commonhold proposals there is no such certainty and this is therefore a far inferior form of tenure. For buyers who will all value stability in homeownership, this represents a significant risk. As the draft Bill stands, I could not advise a buyer of a flat to buy into Commonhold. If developers take the same view, they will not proceed with any new residential development if, as proposed, new leasehold flats were banned and they were forced to sell only Commonhold flats. This could seriously affect the Government’s housebuilding targets.” Link to the original post below with passionate debate in the comments.

@Helen_NW1 @scmurphy @moving_charlie Thanks Helen. I think what has to come out next month is demonstration that Commonhold is better than having 999 yrs + share of freehold. From what I’ve seen so far that case has still to be made. In all the blocks where I’m involved 999+SoF is the way to go - currently.

@AngusFanshawe @scmurphy @moving_charlie You’re hardly an expert in Commonhold but if you have professional experience and training in freehold flats in the UK or abroad (and I know many that have) please do demonstrate to prove me wrong 🙂

@scmurphy @moving_charlie But where’s your protection if the majority votes against you? And we all know what disastrous decisions a majority can make. In leasehold you have your lease that protects your fundamental rights. With commonhold you don’t. Sorry, but I know which building I’d prefer to live in

No. It’s the same argument presented by freeholders who can’t/won’t allow leaseholders to own their homes. The ‘uncertainty’ that - god forbid - residents might have the freedom to change the terms of their commonhold if they want to. Why shouldn’t they? Share of freehold is an approximation of the benefits of commonhold - better than freehold-leasehold but a fudge. Strata title and condominium systems, that allow residents to modify the terms of the collective ownership as they like within reasonable and sensible constraints works just fine for 10’s of millions. I disagree that having a lease with your self is a better form of collective ownership than commonhold with its - oh no! - democracy

@scmurphy @moving_charlie This chap was talking about blocks that own their freehold and each leaseholder has a say in the running of the building. They are not servile! Is commonhold better than that is the question? Not currently it seems and a few problems to iron out

This is a classic allergic reaction of freeholders and others so used to having all the authority over servile resident leaseholders - they can’t stand allowing residents to have decision making authority over their own lives. Democracy is how we run our countries that’s all this change is. It’s how 10s of millions run their multi-unit blocks everywhere else on the planet. Does this chap think the English and Welsh are uniquely incapable of managing their homes?

@moving_charlie Thanks for highlighting. The lack of security for flat owners in a Commonhold building is a concern to be addressed. The key will be if mortgage companies are happy and the indications are cautiously optimistic. Let’s hope they’re invited to the Bill Committee next month

@ClausVistesen Tribunal, right to manage, freehold

Ask yourself; if a leaseholder complains, protests over a service charge or something else, and the freeholder's agent just doesn't reply, what can a leaseholder do? Hint: not much.

@CommonsHCLG @mtpennycook Great for leaseholders, but a problem for freeholders who will suffer. Deservedly some will say, but what is forgotten is many freeholders are also leaseholders who have bought their freehold and paid for the ground rent. An unintended consequence which should be addressed.

We asked @mtpennycook about how the government developed its policy to cap ground rents ⬇️ We begin our prelegislative scrutiny of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill on 3 March. Find out more: committees.parliament.uk/committee/17/h…

@NormaCohen3 @JPWNews Because that is the agreement in the lease which the leaseholders all signed up to when they bought their flats

Why are leaseholders, who do not legally own a single brick in this building, being forced to pay for fire-proofing? Freeholder is Freshwater. Tracey Emin faces £160k bill to fix cladding on brutalist block thetimes.com/article/00fd8d…

@tomcopley Sorry, Act isn't welcome around here where landlords are all quitting. That is only doing one thing for rents ⬆️

It was good to join #AssemblyHousing to discuss the potential impact of the Renters’ Rights Act. The Act delivers significant and welcome benefits to London’s 2.7 million renters that will make renting better and more secure, including an end to no fault eviction.

@createstreets @CemKemahli No-one complaining - except the unfortunate leaseholder living underneath the building works

The Redcliffe Road Local Development Order (RBKC, 2024) demonstrates the power of pre-approved design frameworks. Within 18 months, five of twelve eligible homes had begun building mansards, confirming high latent demand when planning risk is removed. A sixth we, understand, is starting imminently. No one is complaining….

Yes but no. 👍Croydon’s clear rules DID lead to a doubling of small site development by de-risking planning (v good) 👎BUT by having no rules on popular design the changed policies were unpopular locally, led to some real horrors & meant that NIMBYs were fundamentally correct in their complaints that the suburb was losing its nature. The policy was reversed after 3 years, indeed we understand the policy helped lead to the defeat of the Labour Council against the London-wide political swing. Any policy, which is that unpopular & politically unsustainable is clearly not working. One of the officials responsible for the scheme (in our hearing at a public meeting) was openly dismissive of public design preferences. Whoops! Far better is to create a sustainable policy. Fortunately, this is possible. Here’s how …