DD lives in Letchworth Garden City (Hertfordshire, so south east), where most of land is owned by the graden city corporation. Her lease has about 900 years to run on a 999 year least. The unchanging ground rent is £30 a year.
She could buy the freehold for about £2,000 but cannot see the point, the lease is so long it is as good as having the freehold and buying it far exceeds any ground rent she will pay out in her lifetime.
I see no point in getting hung-up over whether a property is leasehold or freehold. Many freehold properties have all sorts of covenants attached to them, stopping you doing all kinds of things, including, on houses we have owned or thought of buying, such as not hanging washing out on a Sunday (we didn't buy that house) to not mining for gravel or running an abattoir on the premises (a very pleasant Victorian semi on quite s mall plot, which we did buy.
It is the conditions and length of the lease that matters. If it is on a house built in the last 50 years check the lease very carefully for increases in the ground rent and the cost of increasing the lease. if like DD's house the original lease was 999 years in length. The ground rent is fixed for the duration, with few restrictions, then do not worry about it.