Fleecehold at The Cockpit

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2. Fleecehold

Fleecehold, a political comedy, charts the journey of three extraordinary women from the North-West who have fought to abolish leasehold 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 freehold to her own home has been sold by the developer onto a viscount who owns 200,000 freeholds and now wants her to pay thousands of pounds for it. 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. Meanwhile, the ghosts of greedy landowners and aristocrats hinder and pour scorn on their attempts at reform alongside modern day freeholders and developers.
Fleecehold has a cast of six and 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.

Writer Michele Sheldon wrote the play out of frustration of being a leaseholder and as a tribute to all the reformers including Louie Burns, who died in 2020, as well as to all leaseholders trapped in their houses and flats.
Michele said: “Every day we hear stories in the news of how leasehold brings mental health and financial misery and ruin to leaseholders. Freeholders and their managing agents treat an estimated ten million leaseholders living in flats, shared ownership, retirement housing, housing estates and those trapped in the cladding scandal as cash cows."