Harry Scoffin - Profile and Journalist Details
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Harry Scoffin
Verified
Founder, Free Leaseholders
London
Beats
Biography
Housing campaigner, freelance journalist and media entrepreneur. My skills lie in journalism; media campaigning; public relations; Westminster liaison; advocacy; policy development; law reform; and business growth. My journalism has been published by outlets including The Independent, The Sunday Times and The Telegraph, and I have been quoted by news organisations such as the BBC, the Daily Express, the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. I have also made broadcast appearances on Vanessa Feltz (TalkTV), Jeremy Kyle Investigates (TalkTV), Channel 4 News and Channel NewsAsia. My work exposing the racket of leasehold housing has been recognised by the UK Parliament and Private Eye. In 2022, I was shortlisted by the International Building Press (IBP) for Housing / Residential Property Journalist of the Year. Since March 2023, I have been leading a vital, pro-democracy campaign for law change to give rightful control to leaseholders over their homes, money and lives. My videos taking me across England, going into people’s homes and hearing how the leasehold scandal is ruining their finances and mental health are racking up between 20,000 to 100,000 views on X, formerly Twitter. Under the moniker of Commonhold Now, I helped massively boost salience of the issues facing leaseholders by arranging extensive media coverage and other attention-grabbing initiatives to turn leasehold into a Westminster issue and pressure Number 10, which was key to ensuring reforms made the King's Speech on November 7th. Shortly after the King’s Speech victory of a Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, and exploiting the changed strategic environment, I launched new group, Free Leaseholders, to lobby for a substantially improved piece of legislation and to prepare leaseholders for a general election fight. Owning the earth, ground, water and soil upon which one’s home is built means access to land capital, control over management of land rights, and debt liberation from the shackles and chains contained in the lease for one’s home.
housing policy, London property Southeast Asian politics, leasehold Singapore, MalaysiaFlat living, commonhold and the politics of authoritarian rule
Science, Food
Content
By Harry Scoffin| freeleaseholders.org.uk@ The government says it wants to get Britain growing again. We’ve got a simple solution: tackle the extractive, rent-seeking behaviour holding back our economy. That starts by freeing leaseholders across England and Wales – but it doesn’t end there. We believe in giving people control over their own money, homes, and lives so much we hired a top KC, Francis Tregear, to apply to be a supportive intervener in the ongoing car finance case at the Supreme Court
A two-tier housing market will be the result of Labour’s half-baked leasehold reform plans | Harry Scoffin
By Harry Scoffin| The Guardian Verified The leasehold system in England and Wales has needed tearing down since the medieval era. It locks homeowners, especially those in flats, into an exploitative, serf-like relationship with the freeholder who owns the property and management rights to it. The freeholder can exploit this power imbalance and, with the backing of the law, coerce the leaseholder to pay extortionate sums in ground rent and service charges
By Harry Scoffin| The Times Verified Last week's commonhold white paper saw the strongest government commitment yet to ban leasehold on flats built in the future. In 1995 Labour promised to change the law so all new flats would be sold as commonhold. Instead, when it introduced commonhold in 2002, it made commonhold voluntary, so it wasn't taken up by housebuilders. Leaseholders are trapped and cannot afford another betrayal like this
Company Info
London, United Kingdom