The government has admitted it could take up to five years to reform what it called a “feudal” leasehold system.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said Labour’s pledge to give 4.8 million leaseholders more rights and protections was “a whole of Parliament commitment” in an interview with LBC.

Labour previously promised to act quickly to ban new leasehold flats and ensure commonhold was the default system.

Mr Pennycock said reform was “more complicated than it sounds, it requires an extremely complex programme of secondary legislation… and then it requires further reforms, not least ensuring that commonhold is the default tenure going forward”.

He went on: “But our commitment to make that change over the Parliament remains in place and I hope at a point in the not too distant future to be able to say more about precisely [what] the plan of action [is and] how we intend to take that forward over the coming years.”

This parliament will end in 2029.

Leaseholders are owner-occupiers – often of flats – who are simultaneously in a landlord and tenant relationship.

Essentially, leaseholders buy the right to live in the property for a given period, often between 99 and 125 years.

Every time the property is sold, the lease is passed on, with a reduced length and, as a result, a reduced value.

Leaseholds can come with administration charges, service charges to maintain and insure the building, and ground rents.

Commonhold is an alternative for properties that share communal areas or services, providing indefinite freehold ownership for flats or other interdependent buildings.

A crackdown on leaseholds has cross-party support, with Michael Gove proposing such a measure during his tenure as Conservative housing secretary.