© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Melissa Briggs, Co-Founder of Carlex is now standing as an independent candidate in the Bognor Regis & Littlehampton constituency at the General Election under the banner of CLIP - Carlex Leasehold Independence Party
I am standing in the General Election on a platform of Leasehold Reform, to publicise this issue to a much wider audience at a time when policies, manifestos and plans for the future are being supplied by all the main parties, but none of them seem to have much in the way of real ideas as to how to tackle the problems within the leasehold industry. These especially affect those who are retired and on fixed incomes.
I have been an Arun District Councillor, representing the Barnham Ward, and have a strong interest in local issues, especially the elderly and local planning/transport policy. By standing for election, I have had the Conservative Whip removed and am now part of a group of three Independent District Councillors. In my commercial life I have spent 30 years in specialist electronic components, and have a lot of management, marketing, recruitment and sales experience. Importantly, as one of the co-founders of Carlex, the Campaign against Retirement Leasehold Exploitation, I highlighted numerous issues where it appears management companies exploit their position to make unreasonable charges to leaseholders in both retirement and non retirement developments.
My objective is to achieve leasehold reform, and encourage transparency and accountability in the sector. In the longer term by growing our campaign in terms of supporters and media coverage I am hoping to encourage the incoming government, whichever party it is, to investigate these serious issues in depth and then develop a plan to regulate the residential property management industry. This sector has only ever been self regulated, which I believe is proving to be extremely unsatisfactory for many thousands of flat owners. I want to reduce the length of time taken to issue legal proceedings. There is no single enforceable Code of Practice for managing residential property, so the unscrupulous can flout it on a regular basis. I want this to change and am hoping that a policy think tank will be formed, that CARLEX will take an active role in it, and that prosecutory powers will be brought into force that will have real teeth and will be used effectively. The issues on which I am standing for election are not new – successive governments have been aware of them for twenty years at least. CARLEX and I have decided it is time to tackle these issues head on, and raise them at a national level at this critical time.
Melissa Briggs is an Independent Parliamentary candidate for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, under the Carlex Leasehold Independence Party (CLIP) banner.