Fleecehold charts the journey of three extraordinary women from the North-West who fought for justice over the last eight years after being mis-sold their homes using the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.
Katie, a nurse, is furious the developer has sold the freehold to her home to a viscount who owns 200,000 freeholds and now wants her to pay nearly £14,000 to buy hers back. Despite being mute as a child and badly bullied because of a bad stammer, Katie decides she must speak out.
She is soon joined by fellow leaseholders Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire who take inspiration from leasehold campaigners Sebastian O’ Kelly, Louie Burns and the ghost of 19th century leasehold reformer MP Henry Broadhurst. They set up the National Leasehold Campaign (NLC) on a Facebook page. Meanwhile, the ghosts of greedy landowners and aristocrats hinder and pour scorn on their attempts at reform alongside modern day freeholders and developers.
The play includes select committee inquiry evidence to document the leasehold reformers’ journey up to helping draft the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill 2023, making its way through Parliament despite being watered down due to lobbying.
Over hundreds of years other leasehold reformers have been laughed at and ignored yet the play highlights how the NLC’s tenacity, perseverance and the use of social media helped to garner support and push for reform, in spite of hard lobbying by freehold investors and landowners.
Michele Sheldon wrote the play out of frustration of being a leaseholder and as a tribute to all the reformers including popular Folkestone-based Louie Burns, who died in 2020, as well as for all leaseholders trapped in their houses and flats. After a sellout run at the Camden Fringe last year, Michele has rewritten parts of the play to reflect audience feedback.
Michele said “Every day we hear stories in the news of how this feudal system brings mental health and financial misery and ruin to leaseholders. Freeholders and their managing agents treat an estimated five million leaseholders living in flats, shared ownership, retirement housing, housing estates and those trapped in the cladding scandal as cash cows. The sheer numbers of people suffering in England and Wales shows leasehold isn’t fit for purpose and must be replaced with commonhold in line with every other country in the world.”
