Almost half of Britons support scrapping leasehold homeownership, which the government is in the middle of attempting to reform, according to the latest poll from YouGov.  

The survey found that 28% of those asked strongly support abolishing this system where a householder owns a property for an agreed number of years, while 19% somewhat supported the move, adding up to 47%. It found that 43% did not know.   

The results of the poll come a day after the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities set a six-week deadline for developers to sign legally binding contracts worth £2bn to repair tower blocks with fire-risk cladding that affects some 1.5 million leaseholders.  

Risks from unsafe insulation cladding came to light in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, which killed 72 people.   

It left leaseholders stuck in flats with similar cladding that they were unable to secure mortgages for because they were deemed unsafe. Leaseholders faced bills amounting to tens of thousands of pounds to remove the cladding.     

The department’s secretary of state Michael Gove says he will bring forward legislation in the spring to prevent builders from operating freely in the housing market if they fail to sign and comply with the remediation contract.  

The body adds: “This means that together with the Building Safety Levy [announced in February 2021], the industry is directly paying an estimated £5bn to make their buildings safe.”    

The department passed the Building Safety Act last April, which among other measures, establishes that landlords and developers – not leaseholders – are liable for costs associated with historical building safety.  

The department also passed the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act last June to “make home ownership fairer and more transparent for millions of future leaseholders”.   

It says: “The reputation of the leasehold system has been damaged by unfair practices that have seen some leaseholders contractually obligated to pay onerous and escalating ground rents, with no clear service in return.”  

Landlords, or freeholders, who charge unfair ground rents leaseholders may be fined up to £30,000.  

Last August, the Competition and Markets Authority secured agreements from nine building firms that bought freeholds from Taylor Wimpy to remove their double ground rent terms, which will see a further 5,000 UK households receive refunds.  

The CMA says: “All nine firms must now remove problematic contract terms that cause ground rents [originally set at around £300] to double in price every 10 years.”  

In 2020-21, there were an estimated 4.9 million leasehold households in England, which equates to 20% of the English housing stock, says the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities  

The YouGov poll questioned a representative sample of 3,024 adults on 30 January.