In reply to EeeByGum:
I live in a first floor flat and have a leasehold on it, as does everyone else on their flats within the building. If I had a freehold then I would own the building structure and the land of the footprint of my flat. Obviously we couldn't all have freeholds else the same plots of land would be owned 4 times (4 storey building).
So we have a leasehold and own everything within our flats (from the plasterboard in I believe). We have a property management company to act as landlord who own the building and the land. We pay them land rent and the much hated property management fee for hallway lights, cleaning and maintenance.
We were offered to club together and buy the freehold on the land, but it would've taken a while to pay back and organising it between 12 families would have been a nightmare.