Generally there's a management company. In some situations owning your flat automatically gives you a share in the management company. Other times the company and the freehold - as it's called - are owned by a third party.
You don't pay rent to the freeholder, but you do pay "management fees" which are supposed to cover insurance and "admin." You may also pay "ground rent" which is a small-ish fee to cover use of the land on which the building stands.
In reality freeholders often do a deal with insurance companies. They get insurance at a reduced rate and don't pass on the savings to leaseholders. There are various other scams that can make leaseholding a nightmare.
This is all completely unrelated to renting. As a leaseholder you're an owner, for varying values of "temporarily".
If your flat has a 999 year lease you can easily sell it on or if it has a share of the freehold.
If it's <99 years nd there's no share of the freehold it gets harder to sell. And by the time you get to <50 years you're going to have serious problems selling it, unless it has some outstanding features or benefits to compensate or you're in a market segment which is happy to treat the money as a simple rental (which does happen, especially at the high end).
You don't pay rent to the freeholder, but you do pay "management fees" which are supposed to cover insurance and "admin." You may also pay "ground rent" which is a small-ish fee to cover use of the land on which the building stands.
In reality freeholders often do a deal with insurance companies. They get insurance at a reduced rate and don't pass on the savings to leaseholders. There are various other scams that can make leaseholding a nightmare.
This is all completely unrelated to renting. As a leaseholder you're an owner, for varying values of "temporarily".
If your flat has a 999 year lease you can easily sell it on or if it has a share of the freehold.
If it's <99 years nd there's no share of the freehold it gets harder to sell. And by the time you get to <50 years you're going to have serious problems selling it, unless it has some outstanding features or benefits to compensate or you're in a market segment which is happy to treat the money as a simple rental (which does happen, especially at the high end).