Leasehold reform is coming, slowly. Here's what you can do now.

Leasehold reform is back in the news, and the mood among leaseholders is easy to read: people want it, and people are tired of waiting. The housing minister, Matthew Pennycook MP, has restated the government’s aim to bring the leasehold system to an end by the close of this Parliament, with commonhold becoming the default for new flats. It’s a significant commitment, and the direction of travel is now clear.

But if you own a leasehold flat today, it’s worth being clear-eyed about what that does and doesn’t mean for you, and about what you can actually do in the meantime. Because the honest answer is that reform, real as it is, will not reach into your building overnight.

What’s actually been said

Stripped of the noise, the position is roughly this. The government intends to set commencement dates for its reforms by the end of this Parliament, which runs to 2029. Commonhold is to become the default tenure for new flats, and the sale of most new leasehold flats is to be banned, though ministers have been candid that the ban may not switch on within this Parliament.

Crucially for existing leaseholders, the five million leases already in place will not simply end. Reform is being phased deliberately, the reason given being to avoid legal and market disruption, and the route offered to people already in leasehold is to enfranchise (buy the freehold, made cheaper and easier once the 2024 Act is switched on) or to convert to commonhold, once conversion is made workable.

In other words: change is coming, it is being built to last, and it is going to take time. All of that is true at once, and it doesn’t serve anyone to pretend otherwise.

Where we stand, honestly

Our own view is no secret, and it hasn’t shifted: commonhold is the fairer model. Buying a home ought to mean the thing is yours, not that you hold a long permission slip from someone else, on a clock that only ever runs down. We set out the full case here, and we’d be glad to see commonhold become the norm.

It’s worth noting who has been resisting. Among the freeholders who went to court to challenge recent reforms were some of the largest aristocratic landed estates in the country, the estates owned by the family trusts of the Duke of Westminster and the Earl of Cadogan. When the people fighting hardest to preserve a system are the holders of centuries-old landed estates, the case that leasehold is a feudal hangover rather rests itself.

But we’re a small software company, not a lawmaker. We can’t make Parliament move faster, and we won’t pretend we can. What we can do is be useful to people during the wait, which for many buildings will be measured in years. And that is worth talking about plainly, because there is often more in your hands right now than the debate suggests.

What you can do now, whoever is in power

Here’s the part that gets lost when the conversation is all about Westminster. For many buildings, you do not have to wait for a single Bill to take meaningful control. Two routes already exist, today, under current law in England and Wales.

Right to Manage lets qualifying leaseholders take over the management of their building without buying the freehold, without going to court, and without proving the landlord did anything wrong. It doesn’t end your lease, but it puts the decisions, the contractors, the budget and the standard of service into the hands of the people who actually live there.

We should be honest that this isn’t always frictionless. Some freeholders contest RTM claims, and a poorly prepared claim can be delayed or knocked back on a technicality, so it pays to get the process right and to take advice if your landlord is likely to resist. For some buildings it genuinely won’t be straightforward, and that is a real frustration rather than a failing on the residents’ part. But the right itself is real, it belongs to leaseholders, and for a great many ordinary buildings it is entirely achievable.

Buying the freehold, through collective enfranchisement, goes a step further, and the government’s own plan is to make it cheaper and easier. Some buildings will be well placed to do this now rather than wait.

If you’re not sure which of these fits your building, or what the difference is between managing and owning, our guide to the three structures walks through it.

None of this is a reason to stop wanting reform. It’s simply a way to stop your own situation being on hold while you wait for it, where that’s possible. A building that takes control now is also a building that’s ready for whatever commonhold brings later. Getting your neighbours talking, putting proper records in place, learning to settle things by a vote instead of an argument: none of that expires when the law finally catches up. It is, if anything, precisely the groundwork commonhold will ask for.

The point

Reform is real, and it’s coming. It’s also phased, partial for now, and years rather than months away for most existing leaseholders. You can hold both of those thoughts at once. The timetable is out of your hands, and out of ours. But for many buildings, the decision to take better control now isn’t something you have to wait for, and that part you can start today.

Reform timelines described here reflect government statements as of August 2026 and are subject to parliamentary process. Right to Manage and collective enfranchisement apply in England and Wales only.