Lease extension and freehold purchase solicitors in Kingston upon Thames
A great many Kingston buildings are already owned by their leaseholders, and a recurring local problem follows: the freehold was bought years ago, and then nothing further was done. The leases carried on running down.
Acting for leaseholders across Kingston upon Thames
We act for leaseholders and freehold companies across the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames — Kingston town, Canbury, Surbiton, Tolworth, New Malden, Coombe, Chessington and Hook — on lease extensions, freehold purchases and putting right arrangements that were never finished.
Kingston’s conversion stock is substantial, and the borough has a long history of leaseholders clubbing together to buy their freehold. The purchase itself was usually done properly. What frequently was not done is everything that should have followed.
New leases were never granted, the company stopped filing, a share never transferred on somebody’s sale — and it surfaces when a flat is marketed.
You own the freehold. Now grant yourselves proper leases.
It is the most common thing we put right in this borough, and it is entirely fixable.
Owning a share of the freehold does not lengthen your lease. The leases continue on exactly the same terms, with the same expiry date and the same ground rent, until new ones are granted. We regularly see Kingston buildings where the freehold was bought in 2008 and the leases are now under seventy years — with owners who believed the problem had been solved.
Granting new leases is straightforward, because the company granting them is the one you control. There is no premium to negotiate, no landlord to persuade and no statutory timetable. Once the freehold transfer is registered, new 999-year leases at a peppercorn can be granted to every flat, drafted once and used throughout. Our fee starts at £950 plus VAT per lease.
And it is the moment to fix everything else. Service charge percentages that do not total 100%, repairing obligations that leave part of the building unallocated, no reserve fund power, no mutual enforcement covenant, and nothing on short lets, electric vehicle charging or building safety cooperation. The company controls the drafting and can adopt one precedent for every flat. The opportunity does not come round again.
Then keep the company alive. Confirmation statements and accounts, a register of members that matches the flats, shares that actually transfer on each sale, and every director verified at Companies House. A company that is struck off loses the freehold to the Crown.
The part the valuer does not do
A lease extension has two halves. One is the premium — a valuation exercise, and the reason to instruct a specialist surveyor. The other is the document you are handed at the end, and it is where a leaseholder is most exposed and least likely to be looking.
On a statutory claim under the 1993 Act the new lease must be granted on the same terms as the existing lease, save for the additional 90 years, the peppercorn rent, and a narrow set of modifications the Act permits — broadly to reflect changes to the property since the original grant, to deal with an interest the landlord no longer holds, or to remedy a genuine defect.
That is a protection, and it is only worth what the solicitor reading the draft makes of it. Landlords’ solicitors will frequently send a draft that is not a copy of your lease at all, and unless somebody compares the two line by line, the changes complete with the extension and bind you for the next century and a half. We check the draft against your existing lease clause by clause, and we resist anything the legislation does not permit.
What we look for in a landlord’s draft
Changes that alter what you pay. Service charge apportionment quietly replaced with “a fair proportion as determined by the landlord”. Widened recovery provisions for management costs, professional fees and reserve funds. New administration charges. Insurance commission made recoverable. Repairing obligations shifted from landlord to leaseholder.
Changes that alter what you may do. A qualified alterations covenant turned absolute, removing the statutory protection that consent may not be unreasonably withheld. New restrictions on subletting or short-term letting. Rights newly reserved to the landlord to build on the roof or run services through your flat. Wider forfeiture provisions, or indemnity covenants the original lease never contained.
None of this is hypothetical, and very little of it is announced. It arrives as a clean engrossment described as being “in the same form as the existing lease”, and it is found only by comparison. Some modifications are legitimate — our job is to distinguish those from the ones that simply improve the landlord’s position, and to say so in writing before anything is agreed.
Landlords and housing associations in Kingston upon Thames
The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames is freeholder of Right to Buy stock, including on the Cambridge Road Estate.
Housing associations operating here include Clarion Housing Group, Peabody, Metropolitan Thames Valley and Hyde Housing.
But the most common landlord in Kingston is the leaseholders themselves, through resident-owned freehold companies, alongside small private freeholders and family trusts across the conversion stock.
Areas we cover
Who does what
The valuation
The premium is a question of valuation evidence rather than legal argument, and it needs a surveyor who acts on enfranchisement claims regularly. A specialist valuer appraises the flat, advises on the figure to propose and the range within which to settle, negotiates with the landlord’s surveyor and gives expert evidence at the Tribunal if it comes to that. We work closely with Blakes Chartered Surveyors, and you are free to instruct any valuer you wish.
The legal work
Establishing entitlement, identifying every landlord who must be served, drafting and serving a notice that will withstand scrutiny, running the statutory timetable — and negotiating the terms of the new lease itself. The two roles are not sequential: the figure in your section 42 notice is a joint decision, which is why we involve a valuer from the first conversation rather than after the notice has been drafted.
Or have both handled together
Packaged fixed fees combining the legal work, the valuation and the negotiation are available through extension.lease, run jointly by Arcadia Law and Blakes Chartered Surveyors — often the simplest and most cost-effective route for a single flat.
Estimate your premium
Our lease extension calculator gives an indicative premium range from three figures: the unexpired term, the ground rent payable and the value of your flat. It is a starting point for a conversation rather than a valuation, but it will tell you the order of magnitude before you commit to anything.
If your flat has fewer than 90 years remaining, or a ground rent that rises at intervals of less than twenty years, it is worth running the numbers now rather than at the point you decide to sell.
Fees
Fixed fees wherever possible, agreed before we start. The figures below are starting points for straightforward matters; we will give you a tailored quote once we have seen the lease.
Group and block discounts are available where several leaseholders in the same building instruct together, priced as one exercise rather than a claim per flat. Freehold purchases are priced per participating flat from £1,250 + VAT. On a statutory claim you are also responsible for the landlord’s reasonable legal and valuation costs, which can be challenged — the costs of the negotiation itself and of any Tribunal proceedings are not recoverable from you.
Our other work for Kingston upon Thames clients
Lease extensions and freehold purchases are the bulk of what we do, but not all of it. Residential conveyancing — sale and purchase of houses and flats, freehold and leasehold — sits naturally alongside a lease extension where a sale is in prospect. Landlords and management companies — service charges, section 20 consultation, arrears, consents, company filings and the transactional work every sale generates. And the documents: deeds of variation, licences to alter, lease and title reviews, and independent legal advice for guarantors and directors.
Why instruct Arcadia Law
We read the lease you are being given, not just the one you have — every draft is compared clause by clause against the existing lease, and anything the legislation does not permit is resisted. Specialists, not generalists, and members of the Association of Leasehold Enfranchisement Practitioners. We act across all thirty-two London boroughs and know how the local authority legal departments and the larger investor freeholders operate. We act for landlords as well as leaseholders, which is why we know where a landlord’s position will and will not hold — conflicts are checked before we take instructions. Tribunal and court where it is warranted, weighed against the costs, the risk and the time, which for many claims points the other way.
Common questions
We own our freehold but our leases are still short — what do we do?
Grant yourselves new 999-year leases at a peppercorn. Buying the freehold does not alter the existing leases; that is a separate step. It is straightforward because the company granting them is the one you control, and our fee starts at £950 plus VAT per lease.
A previous owner never transferred the share of freehold — how is that fixed?
It needs tracing and regularising, and it is far easier before a sale than during one. The seller cannot transfer what they do not hold and the buyer cannot become a member, so the transaction stalls while somebody finds a leaseholder who left years ago.
Our company has not filed anything for years — does that matter?
Yes. A company that stops filing is eventually struck off, and on dissolution its property vests in the Crown as bona vacantia — including the freehold of your building. Recovering it means restoring the company or buying the freehold back, and neither is quick or cheap.
Do our directors need to verify their identity at Companies House?
Yes. It has been compulsory for new appointments since November 2025, and existing directors must verify within a transition period closing in November 2026. Leaseholder directors doing an unpaid job for their neighbours are caught exactly as any other director is.
Tell us about your Kingston upon Thames flat
The address, the unexpired term and the ground rent if you know them, and who your freeholder is. If you have received an offer from your landlord, send that too. We will tell you where you stand, what a claim is likely to cost, whether the statutory or voluntary route suits you better — and, if an offer has been made, what is actually in it. The first conversation is at no cost.