Michal Gove will leave the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities having seen his Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill make it onto the statute book.

Despite a desire to abolish leasehold altogether, the Housing Secretary was forced to accept a watered-down Bill which failed to cap ground rents – although it did ban the sale of new leasehold houses, give flat owners the same rights as house owners to extend their lease by 990 years, and abolish marriage value which could make it cheaper for leaseholders with fewer than 80 years left to extend their leases.

However, following years of updates and promises, Gove failed to see his vaunted Renters (Reform) Bill make it over the line, despite announcing earlier this year that Section 21 evictions would be outlawed before the General Election.

Gove, who will quit as MP for Surrey Heath after 19 years along with 200 other MPs, spent time in five departments during which time he led the Vote Leave campaign and introduced education reforms.

Political career

He will end his political career in the DLUHC having given the green light to a number of large selective licensing schemes such as Southwark, Brent and Nottingham.

He prompted the consultation into Awaab’s Law in the social housing sector to force social landlords in England to investigate mould and damp issues more quickly, struck an agreement with developers, forcing them to fix fire safety defects and brought in amendments to the Building Safety Bill to protect leaseholders from safety remediation bills.

Gove recently announced an extra £3 billion for an affordable housing loan scheme to build 20,000 more homes although earlier this month admitted the government had not met its manifesto pledge of building 300,000 new homes each year. His ambition to require planning permission for future short-term lets and a mandatory national register to tackle the growth of holiday homes hasn’t yet been realised.

In his resignation letter, Gove said: “I was also pleased to be able to introduce the most wide-ranging reforms to leasehold, social housing and supported housing in a generation. We have built a million homes in this Parliament. But just as important as increasing the supply of new homes is work to make sure every existing home is safe, decent and warm.”‍

Pic credit: Twitter/Michael Gove