What should the Law Commission include in its next programme of law reform? Kathleen Shields discusses some options
The Law Commission has a statutory duty to keep “all the law” under review with a view to its development and reform. In order to ensure that our work is as relevant and informed as possible, we embark on wide public consultations when drawing up our programmes of law reform. We are now consulting for our 13th Programme, which will inform our work until 2020. In addition to calling for new ideas, we have identified some areas of law that our experience and discussion with stakeholders suggest may require reform and so could be potential projects for the Programme. Among these potential areas for reform are leasehold law, public inquiries, weddings and surrogacy.
Leaseholds
Leasehold law impacts the lives of millions of people, whether they are landlords or tenants of homes, farms or businesses. In England alone, the most recent statistics show 8.2 million households are rented privately or socially and 4.1 million dwellings are held under a long residential tenancy. We are interested to