Hello and welcome back to page 94. This is the Paul Foot Award mini series.

Let's find out who is the second of the shortlisted journalists for this year's award.

Page 94, the Private Eye podcast.

I'm Daniel Timms at the Sheffield Tribune.

And what is the story that's brought you to the Paul Foot Awards this year?

We covered a story about Andrew Milne,

a solicitor who threatened homeowners with legal action, in some cases extracting over 25,000

pounds out of them. Okay. Now I'm going to say, first of all, there are legal proceedings ongoing

at the moment, so we are slightly limited in what we can say. Yeah. If you're watching and there's a sudden cut, I've said something I shouldn't have said.

There we go.

So I'll start off by asking you, who is Andrew Milne?

Okay, so Milne is a solicitor.

Has been qualified for many years.

And we came across him when he started sending letters to homeowners in Sheffield.

And this happened because he had bought the freeholds to their homes.

So Sheffield is a bit unusual.

Normally when people think of leasehold, they think of flats.

Yeah.

But actually in Sheffield, in some areas, over two-thirds of houses are owned leasehold.

And another company owns the freehold. Okay. owned leasehold and another company owns the freehold.

Okay. So it's a company that owns the freehold. It may be an individual and they're on the much longer. Those are the 999 year.

Yeah. Leases that when you buy the place, that's what you're actually buying. You're not buying the land it's sitting on.

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