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I asked GPT what it thought of me. Much of it was surprisingly accurate and delivered in a kind and considerate way. This stood out though regarding my bitter leasehold experience. "The leasehold battle is real, grotesque and profoundly damaging. But it has also colonised too much of your identity. You’re no longer merely Chris who owns a flat caught in an abusive system; at times you become the designated witness to everything wrong with leasehold. That gives suffering meaning, but also keeps you psychologically tethered to the very organisation you want freedom from. Irwell Valley occupies far more of your inner life than it has any right to." That’s the everyday damage.

I’ve lost count of how many times ChatGPT has asked whether I’m safe or need to call the Samaritans. What it fails to understand is that, with unaffordable leasehold, you have to be in it for the long haul. Dark humour isn’t a farewell note. It’s my pressure valve. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not going anywhere. This is about endurance, not surrender. I endure because things have to get better. Departing this planet over something as grubby and unworthy as a housing association would be the ultimate waste of future potential. They do not get to write the ending. But this is a desperate situation. Punishing, life-changing service charges becoming their new normal have steadily stripped away our financial security, while we continue to live under the threat of yet more major works, more demands and more bills we may have no realistic means of paying. Still, that little flame keeps going. And the knowledge that we have been so thoroughly fucked over - after what I regarded as grubby tactics, followed by what felt like a Muttley-style “gimme a medal” victory lap after the court case - has given me something else too: an appetite to keep fighting, documenting and exposing it. Management changes. Policies collapse. Institutions may outlive the people who made bad decisions, but not always their reputations. Their tenure will end before our resolve does. Hopefully. This post reflects my personal experience and opinion, based on the correspondence, proceedings and events I have witnessed.

So I probably will not be retiring in 2034. After 35 years of work, the full State Pension is currently just £3.30 a week more than the minimum income provided through Pension Credit anyway, so what was the point? That is £171.60 a year gross, or roughly £137 after basic-rate tax once a modest private pension has used up the remaining personal allowance. Thirty-five years of contributions. Flatlined wages. Inadequate employer pension contributions, standard in the industry I worked in. A mortgage paid off. And the reward at the basic-income level is measured in pennies a day. Meanwhile, I remain trapped in a leasehold flat whose value has plummeted. I cannot afford the lease extension needed to improve its saleability, and even at its present value I could not sell it and buy a freehold home. So I face retirement with escalating service charges, major-works bills and legal costs continuing like a financial penance. Not because I failed to work, save or provide for myself, but because the home I spent my working life paying for has become the greatest threat to my retirement. I could live happily and modestly: cheap, healthy food; a good book - I have plenty; an occasional coffee out; no expensive subscriptions and no great luxuries. What I cannot afford is leasehold. So no, 2034 is not looking like retirement. It is looking like carrying on working because the system has made stopping unaffordable. At least a career in the public sector might have provided some pension security after a lifetime of work. In another life, knowing what I know now, I would have swerved my career path entirely.

I've been looking at moving abroad when I retire as I'm sick of this country and its floundering leadership, punitive taxation, cost of living, and sick to the back teeth of leasehold continually extracting more and more from a fixed income. And the particularly irritating part is that I could afford far more easily if British leasehold had not been extracting £400+ plus from me every month for a cupboard in Bolton before I've even bought so much as a mango. My retirement problem is not fundamentally inadequate pension provision. It is that a large chunk of my future pension has already been requisitioned by a now devalued building I supposedly owned according to the theatrical pretense of the mortgage at least. This makes future provisions or a chance of escape impossible.

I’m trying to muster up enough energy to tidy up. But the flat doesn’t feel like a home at the moment. It feels like a bunker that isn’t even fully mine, because leasehold has a funny way of reminding you that "ownership" comes with an asterisk. You think you’ve done the responsible thing. Worked for years. Cleared the mortgage. Achieved one of the biggest financial milestones of your life. Then the service charges climb, the major works land, the legal costs follow, and suddenly it feels like you’ve cleared one mortgage only to be handed another one in perpetuity. When the charges were reasonable, clearing the mortgage felt like the biggest achievement of my life. Now, perversely, it can feel like my greatest failure. I’m getting older. I’m poorer. I’m clinging on to a job. And I’m doing freelance work for pitiful rates just to keep the plates spinning. You need a lot of gumption, as my mum would have said, to get past that feeling. Some days, even tidying up feels like an act of defiance.

HOW BLAIR KILLED HOMEOWNERSHIP 🥀 Tony Blair has some serious cheek. He helped create today’s housing crisis when he abandoned Labour’s 1995 promise to replace leasehold with commonhold. By shelving the proposals in “An End to Feudalism”, drafted by Nick Raynsford and the late Frank Dobson and signed off by a fresh-faced Tony Blair as one of his first policy prospectuses, Blair’s Labour paved the way for today’s leasehold scandal. Blair’s Labour screwed the people for the benefit of the property elites, keeping power in the hands of the few over the many. Starmer’s Labour must atone for the 2002 Act betrayal. Commonhold for the many, not just the new. Use the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill to deliver the remaining Law Commission enfranchisement and Right to Manage recommendations promised in Labour’s 2024 manifesto and the July 2024 King’s Speech. No more excuses. Be worthy of the Labour name.

The managing agent for the block where I am both a leaseholder and freeholder (enfranchised) just told us they would charge us extra if we didn’t use their in house insurance broker 😂 It’s like when an estate agent has a deal with a particular conveyancer and tries to funnel them business Egregious Leasehold reform is great but managing agents are going to be the next scandal !