Government to fast-track Right to Manage changes

The act, which was hurried through parliament before it was dissolved for the election last year, also includes a ban on selling most new houses under a leasehold tenure.

In November, housing minister Matthew Pennycook said the government will consult in 2025 on banning new leasehold flats and will publish a white paper on reforms to commonhold in the next few months.

He followed this up in January by signing regulations to remove the two-year ownership rule for leaseholders.

Harry Scoffin, founder of campaign group Free Leaseholders, said: “Leaseholders voted for change – so the fast-tracking of these Right to Manage reforms is a small but important step towards empowering people to take rightful control over their homes, money and lives.

“On the more substantive and pressing issue of wider systemic reform, while we welcome the minister’s new comments that Labour are committed to scrapping leasehold ‘in its entirety’, trust among leaseholders in politics and politicians is at all time low.

“We need to see the promised Commonhold Bill hitting the statute books no later than the second session of parliament. Any later and the history of this tenure shows us that both political capital and time runs out for meaningful change to be delivered.

“The issues are well known and most of the policy work is based upon recommendations from Law Commission reports now half a decade old. Labour had 14 years in opposition to think about how to end this scandal – leaseholders deserve an insurgent government of delivery.”

At the same time, millions of people are set to benefit from improvements to the way homes are bought and sold under plans to digitalise the process.

Under major new plans, the government will modernise the way the process works to bring down current delays of almost five months. 

One of the key reasons the buying and selling process can be long and frustrating is a lack of digitalisation and joined-up working in the sector. This is why the government is opening up key property information, ensuring this data can be shared between trusted professionals more easily, and driving forward plans for digital identity services to slash transaction times.

It hopes the reforms “will make home buying fit for the 21st century” and make it “far less likely for surprises to be encountered later on in the process”.

Fall throughs – which affect one in three transactions – cost people around £400m a year, on top of the four million working days lost by conveyancers and estate agents alone which is equivalent to £1bn.

Mr Pennycook said: “We are streamlining the cumbersome homebuying process so that it is fit for the 21st century, helping homebuyers save money, gain time and reduce stress, while also cutting the number of house sales that fall through.  

“Our modernisation of the system sits alongside further reforms to improve the lives of leasehold homeowners across the country, allowing them to more easily and cheaply take control of the buildings they live in and clamp down on unreasonable or extortionate charges.

“These reforms build on the government’s Plan for Change to deliver higher living standards and 1.5 million safe and decent homes in this parliament, and our ongoing efforts to protect leaseholders suffering from unfair and unreasonable practices as we work to end the feudal leasehold system for good.” 

Currently, information on building control and highways is predominantly paper-based or recorded in non-machine-readable formats. On top of this, where data is available electronically, there are not established protocols for accessing, sharing and verifying that data, which leads to more delays.  

The housing department is working with the property market, supported by HM Land Registry (HMLR), on a 12-week project to identify the design and implementation of agreed rules on data for the sector.

HMLR will also build on its work in digitising property information and lead 10-month pilots with a number of councils to identify the best approach to opening up more of their data and making it digital.

This will all be carried out in conjunction with the Digital Property Market Steering Group – a collection of industry and government experts committed to digitalising the homebuying and selling process.