The government has confirmed it is consulting on carve-outs from its proposed cap on ground rents, raising the prospect that a significant number of leasehold properties will fall outside the flagship reform that many in the sector believed was settled policy. The move follows months of industry lobbying since ministers first signalled they would cap ground rents at a nominal amount, widely expected to be set at £250 a year, as part of the broader leasehold reform agenda enacted through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act. For a market that has spent the best part of a decade absorbing the fallout from the doubling ground rent scandal, this consultation reopens a debate that many landlords, freeholders and leaseholders alike had assumed was largely closed.