Lambeth legal costs explode as council spends millions extending property leases

Lambeth Council’s spending on legal fees has increased dramatically in recent years, rising from around £10 million in 2019 to £30 million in 2024, Brixton Buzz can reveal.

The costs are largely to extend leases on properties Lambeth manages in Streatham.

Cabinet papers in 2020 noted that “The cost of individual lease extensions was estimated as c.£13.6m in 2018 and will now have risen to an estimated £15m due to the reduction in the remaining unexpired term.”

Lambeth also recently won a high court case against residents who were challenging the council’s plan to buy back 160 former council homes, further adding to legal costs.

In January 2025, Green Party councillor Scott Ainslie responded to the publication of Lambeth’s accounts for the previous year, saying “now the accounts are out today – the Housing Revenue Account has a deficit of £23m, it was £18m in surplus last year. There are continuing governance and monitoring failures – why has £13.5m gone to TLT solicitors for example, and what are you going to do to address these ongoing failures?”

TLT is the top earning firm of solicitors from Lambeth Council since 2019, with the vast majority of this spending coming in the last year. On the TLT Solicitors’ website, a profile for partner Neil Gordon states that he worked “leading the TLT real estate team advising the London Borough of Lambeth, including multiple lease extension and freehold enfranchisement claims on flats and houses, real estate issues of capital investment in early years education centres with grant funding, investment acquisitions, Academy school conversions and development agreements for new school facilities.”

Looking at the council’s records of spending over £500 for the past 6 years shows that the majority of payments to TLT came in 2024 or 2025, with one huge payment totalling over £11 million.

Councillor Ainslie told Brixton Buzz that the money was given to TLT Solicitors “to extend leases on Telford Estate-they’d almost ran out. This is a costly business. They’ve not given a good enough reason to my question on why they waited so long to renew leases.”

In response to Ainslie’s question on the late renewal of the lease, Lambeth Council said “The decision to extend the lease was taken in 2020 when there were 10 years remaining on the lease.

The cost of extending the lease at different points in time is unknown and would be speculation. It is standard practice to extend leases as a result of changes or when they approach expiry.”

Ainslie said that a Lambeth Finance officer had explained that the cost was “to extend the leases of 48 individual flats in Telford Parade Mansions, Streatham Hill for 90 years, under the terms of the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. Please note that this payment was made through to solicitors not to the solicitors.”

The cost of this works out at £289K per property lease extended. Ainslie also asked the Council what return on this investment they were receiving, and was told that “the total rent due for all the tenanted properties for last year 2024/2025 was £392,445.39, and for this year 2025/2026 is £390,467.48.”

The mansions are just off Streatham Hill, and according to the Land Registry site, the owners appear to be Paul Marsh, Barry Marsh and Amanda Cheek.

The freehold comprises “1 to 27 Telford Avenue Mansions, 2 to 6 (even) Telford Avenue, 1 to 20 Telford Parade Mansions and 46 to 60 (even) Streatham Hill”, according to the Land Registry documents Brixton Buzz has seen.

Paul Marsh, Barry Marsh and Amanda Cheek have numerous companies listed under their names on Companies House, many of which appear to be in property development and landlording. Barry Marsh describes his profession as ‘Property Developer’.

Although these 1930s mansion blocks have been privately owned since the freehold was sold by Lambeth in the mid 1980s, at least some have been leased back to the council, while some of the flats in the blocks appear for rent on RightMove, with one 3 bedroom flat renting for £2,700 a month.

It appears the lease was due to run out in 2029, and has cost Lambeth a sizeable amount of money to renew.

When the council’s accounts were published, local independent auditing group, People’s Audit, posted on Twitter/X, saying “Would somebody at #Lambeth care to explain how one firm of lawyers (TLT solicitors) has been paid £13.5M out of the HRA this quarter?”

In 2023, Inside Housing revealed that Lambeth had spent £16.3 million from its Housing Revenue Account on legal fees and compensation from 2020-2023.

While on the surface, Lambeth’s payments to solicitors show what appears to be high spending to law firms, yet again these costs come down to the ongoing housing crisis in the borough, and Lambeth’s careless use of its housing stock.

Telford Mansions are council homes built in the 1930s whose freehold was sold off under Thatcher’s Right to Buy, and Lambeth residents are paying the cost to lease back the properties long term.

An FoI request sent to Lambeth Council asking to see the Terms of Reference for the TLT should have been responded to by August 6, but the council has delayed responding to the request promptly.

A Lambeth Council spokesperson said:

“Lambeth is on the front line of a national housing crisis, and we are doing everything we can to build the homes that will provide the stability and security all our residents need.

“Our New Homes Programme sets out the work we are doing in this area, including almost 10,500 homes approved through planning, to support the government’s growth mission to build more homes across the country.

We have built 500 homes on council-owned land since 2017, with around 2000 to be built in the pipeline.”

“We are also committed to bringing empty homes back into use as quickly as possible, as this increases the amount of housing available to us and helps tackle homelessness across the borough.”

“In 2020, when the unexpired term remaining on the head leases of Telford Parade Mansions was extremely short, the council decided that extending the leases of 48 individual flats was the best way of achieving greater security for tenants.”

“Lambeth invested in acquiring the leases to achieve security for the social rented properties and to avoid the council being involved in protracted and expensive litigation.

The Council considers that the sums spent on acquiring a valuable asset represents good value for money over the long term, along with protecting all the families who live in the building.”

There are currently over 600 empty council homes in Lambeth, some of which have been empty over 2 years.

Lambeth did not respond when asked why the leases could not have been extended earlier at a lower cost.