A leasehold flat buying Freehold from council

SKchloe

We are in the process of buying a first floor flat in a victorian conversion with 2 flats in Southwark, London.
It is a leasehold, Southwark council being the freeholder. 
We realised that the council requires applications and charges fees for any small alterations to our home, even for removing a cupboard or installing a shelf. 

It might be our lack of experience in the matter, but I find this very odd, especially as a new flat owner, I think it's normal wanting to move and change furniture in our flat without sending applications and waiting for a reply for each small change. 

So we thought an alternative would be to purchase the freehold from the council.
We also found out that the Southwark council is the owner and freeholder of the ground floor flat and it's renting it to a council tenant. 

Could you share any information if you have heard or experienced buying the freehold from the council where the other flat owner is the council itself?

I guess it won't be possible to have a share of freehold in this case and we will have to buy the freehold of the whole building.
One last question: In case we purchase the freehold, would the loft be included in the sale? At the moment the council owns the loft too.

If you have any information on this matter it'd be a massive help for us. 

Thank you.

Chloe

fifimation

Hi Chloe,
Im also in a very simpler situation. We own the leasehold to our ground floor flat in Southwark, the whole building is owned (freeholder) is the council and the flat upstairs is rented to council Tenants. We are interested in finding out any information on buying share of freehold (if thats even possible)  or whole freehold from the council and would love if you could share any information you have found out on this topic. Im not even too sure where we should start! 
Thanks
Fi

greatcrested

The council is unlkely to sell the freehold. Especially as they are using the other flat to house council tenants.

And they are unlikely to sell a share of the freehold either. That way they'd have huge extra admin issues cooperating with you (the other joint freehold owner) over every aspect of the freehold.

Have you read the lease? I doubt they can get involved if you "removing a cupboard or installing a shelf" - what exactly does the lease say?

If you did buy the freehold, that would include the entire building (and the land on which it stands) and so yes, would include the attis. But your lease would be unchanged, so you would have to incorporate the attic into your lease if you wanted to use it. Effectively, you, as leaseholder, would buy the attic space from yourself, as freeholder).