Posted: May 14, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Commonhold, Fire safety, Leasehold, Right to buy, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
If it was possible to avoid the wall-to-wall coverage of personalities and politics, Wednesday’s King’s Speech signals some significant progress on policy.
As the background briefing document makes clear, the government is attempting to resolve problems that have dogged housing for years, decades and in one case more than a century.
Taking those problems in reverse order of intractability, the Social Housing Renewal Bill will finally kill off three zombie policies that were introduced by the Conservatives ten years ago but never implemented.
Measures requiring local authorities to introduce fixed-term tenancies, charge higher rents for higher-earning tenants and sell off high-value homes threatened the very existence of social housing but became untenable in the wake of Grenfell.
Now they will be repealed, with the government arguing this will give providers greater confidence to invest in new homes.
The same Bill will introduce significant, previously announced, changes to the Right to Buy: increasing the eligibility threshold from three to 10 years, reducing percentage discounts up to a maximum of 15 per cent and exempting new homes so that they cannot be sold for 35 years.
These measures should dramatically reduce demand for the Right to Buy, especially when accompanied by reductions in maximum cash discounts to pre-2012 levels and an extension of cash floor protection, but they will not kill the policy completely.
The government could have used its huge majority to follow Scotland and Wales by abolishing the Right to Buy, or allowed local authorities to apply for exemptions for areas of high housing stress, but has instead opted to curb it.
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Posted: March 6, 2025 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Commonhold, Leasehold |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
England and Wales have a long history of trying and failing to introduce commonhold and an even longer one of trying and failing to reform leasehold.
So this week’s white paper is a big moment, coming 60 years after Labour first pledged commonhold and 23 years after it botched its implementation.
After decades of frustration and failed attempts at reform, leaseholders will have to be patient for a little bit longer and take the housing minister at his word that this is ‘the beginning of the end for leasehold’.
While some have criticised Labour for going too slowly, the white paper highlights the flaws in previous legislation and the importance of getting things right.
So there will be both a draft Bill setting out how the existing commonhold framework will be amended and a further consultation on banning leasehold for new-build flats before all the pieces can be put into place.
Commonhold was first introduced in England and Wales in 2002 to bring them into line with what has been the default for at least 50 years in much of the rest of the developed world.
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Jules Birch 