Oral evidence: Scrutiny of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, HC
Housing, Communities and Local Government
Oral evidence: Scrutiny of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, HC
1681
Tuesday 17 March 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 17 March 2026.
Members present: Mr Gagan Mohindra (Chair); Andrew Cooper; Chris Curtis; Mr Will Forster; Andrew Lewin;
Sarah Smith; Sean Woodcock.
Questions 169–185 (Panel IV)
Witnesses: Martin Boyd, Chair, Leasehold Advisory Service; Sebastian O'Kelly, CEO, Leasehold Knowledge
Partnership; Sue Phillips, Representative, Shared Ownership Resources; Shula Rich, Vice-Chair, Federation of Private Residents Associations.
Evidence of Shula Rich
Q169 — Introduction
Chair: Can I invite the panel to introduce themselves?
Shula Rich:
Good morning. My name is Shula Rich. I represent today the Federation of Private Residents Associations, which is the only association representing organised leaseholders within blocks. I am also the chair of Brighton, Hove and District Leaseholders, which has been going since 1976. Isee in my voluntary work at least 500 leaseholders a year, which adds up to probably 15,000 to 20,000 issues over the 30 years that I have been involved with leasehold. I also wrote the first courses for managing agents, working with the National Federation of Property Professionals, and drafted a national contract for leasehold management. That is the beginning.
Q173 — Protection of leaseholders' funds: lessons from Australia
Chris Curtis: You asked if anybody else wanted to come in on what we can learn from Australia.
Shula Rich:
One of the most important things, which has been ignored so far in our legislation, is thatleaseholders, for their funds, have less protection than assured shorthold tenants do. There is no protection for the client account beyond £50,000 with a RICS surveyor's client account, or £120,000 in a bank. In Australia, the leaseholders' funds are all put together and insured, the cost of which is covered by the interest, so all commonhold unit owners have their reserve funds protected in a fund to the full amount, and the cost of that protection is covered by the interest. That is something huge that could be introduced, both for leaseholders and for commonhold unit owners, which we are completely missing. While assured shorthold tenants have their deposits insured, leaseholders have millions and millions of pounds that are not insured in any way.
Q174–175 — Whether legislation is needed for fund protection
Chris Curtis: Do we need to care about that in the legislation though?
Shula Rich: Yes.
Chris Curtis: Why wouldn't commonholders organise that themselves?
Shula Rich: It is not available. There is no insurance scheme, no fidelity bond, no cyber-crime bond. I have been researching for my own block, where we have £2 million in leaseholders' funds, what assurances and insurances we can get. It is not commonly available.
Q177 — Promoting commonhold through the planning system
Andrew Lewin: What form would that [Government support for early transition] take? I am interested in the views of the panel on how you see that working practically.
Shula Rich:
I have always said that I would like to see commonhold as a condition of planning. If there were even a preference given to commonhold under section 106 agreements, that would be acceptable now within our present legal framework. However, if it were said that commonhold could be a condition of planning for new build, or that there would be benefits to developers in offering commonhold, perhaps more of those 1.5 million homes that are planned would actually be commonhold. We need to lay the ground, and not silo ourselves in one set of laws but look outwards so that we can have tenure-responsive planning, as other countries do.
Q178 — Making leasehold liveable; right to manage for whole estates
Andrew Lewin: Would you have any message for Government on how to set up a system that encourages and enables conversion to commonhold?
Shula Rich:
On prioritising commonhold, I have to speak up for leaseholders. If commonhold is promoted as better—I absolutely believe that it is—we are devaluing the tenure of 5 million or more leaseholders. Let's also look, for the sake of our members, at making leasehold liveable. One of the ways that we can do that, even within this Bill, is to make it possible for whole estates to have the right to manage, which would also facilitate the move towards commonhold for whole estates. Presently, one can only get the right to manage for one set of premises, so I would like to suggest that 50% of blocks on an estate could ask for the right to manage, or 50% of qualifying leaseholders, which would echo the 50% and smooth the path towards commonhold. Right to manage was always intended to be a step towards buying one's freehold, so the right to manage for whole estates would stop the terrible abuses that have now grown up where freeholders grab people's gardens, for example. As they have learned that blocks prior to the Settlers Court case are now managing whole estates, they are coming back to people I know and grabbinggardens and car parks and trying to take back control. If we are going to make the path towards commonhold viable, let's set the ground right in allowing big estates to also get the right to manage with far less complication than there is at present, where it is not allowed.
Q179 — Qualifying leaseholders and the 50% threshold for commonhold conversion
Chair: Do you think that converting to commonhold should be made the default outcome of a collective enfranchisement, or should leaseholders have to explicitly vote for the conversion?
Shula Rich:
Fifty per cent is very hard to get in large blocks and on large estates, because of the number of absent owners—I think in 18% of new builds, there are Chinese owners and almost equal numbers of people from Hong Kong. We could look at the definition of the qualifying leaseholder and think about whether they are UK-based. That does not rule out large investors in several flats, for example, but it does mean that people who are impossible to get hold of cannot spoil it for other people looking for a 50% that they will never get. That would obviously be a huge help, so we want to redefine the qualifying leaseholder as being UK based.
Q185 — Managing agents; right to manage for estates; freeholder bullying
Sarah Smith: I am interested to hear from anyone on the panel whether you would like to see [managing agents regulation or Law Commission recommendations on RTM] included within the legislation, or whether anything else is missing from the current Bill.
Shula Rich:
Managing agents should have a qualification. That qualification can be available from many places, including the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management, the TPI or the College of Estate Management. In terms of mental health, being a managing agent has been documented as one of the worst occupations in the country, so better training is going to make them better managers. You can regulate and you can qualify managing agents, but you cannot regulate the blocks and say that they must take a regulated or a qualified managing agent on. So I would like to see a range of good, high-level academic and practical qualifications for managing agents, and it should be shown that these may be the people of choice. But one single managing agent is not always suitable, particularly for a large development; even in a block of 109 like my own, we prefer an onsite manager. We prefer our own accountants and bookkeepers, who can be welded into a team with proper procurement practices. In a practical sense, therefore, there are things that have been left out of the education of managing agents—particularly procurement policies, guarantees and fidelity bonds. All power to the institutions that are offering better qualifications. I hope it makes agents better agents and the agents of choice, but not the agents of compulsion.
Shula Rich (further, on RTM for estates):
There is one other thing. Right to manage could be made to work within this Bill for estates, because people are being bullied out of their right to manage by freeholders writing letters to whole estates saying, 'You will get your premises, but we will still control the car parks, the gardens and the security.' Recently, the Metropolitan Thames Valley housing trust wrote to three blocks that had just got right to manage to tell them that all their leases were going to have to be altered because they would no longer be contributing towards the communal areas. Brookgate, for example, has sent out a threatening letter to all its leaseholders in a Cambridge estate saying that, if they go for right to manage, they will have to pay the costs. That sort of bullying occurs because of the profit that is being taken away from the freeholders who are managing the estates. When it first came in, right to manage did allow RTM for estates to include leasehold houses and freehold houses. If we can introduce just one thing, can we look at allowing that again? Everything on an estate should be able to get right to manage as a whole estate; that will end the threats, the bullying and the misinformation.
Evidence extracted from the full transcript of HC 1681 | 17 March 2026 | Questions 131–185