Today, the Building Safety Regulator moves from the Health and Safety Executive to become a new non-departmental body of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. We are also launching the first phase of work to improve the implementation of the higher-risk building regime, so that the regulator can become more proportionate while continuing to deliver the highest safety standards for residents.
The Grenfell Tower tragedy exposed multiple systemic failures across the built environment. The BSR was created to help ensure those failures do not occur again. It has worked with others to begin a deep culture shift across the sector, improve safety standards across the built environment and deliver a major shift in how buildings are regulated, constructed, and managed.
The Government demonstrated last summer that they are prepared to act decisively to support the regulator and make sure it can work effectively, by bringing in Lord Roe as chair and setting up the BSR as a separate organisation. Today’s change in how the regulator is governed will ensure it remains dedicated to building safety and standards, with greater operational flexibility and clearer accountability to the Department. It pursues a renewed mission to uphold and advance safety standards across its areas of responsibility with rigour and expertise. This marks an important step in our programme of reform for the sector and a key milestone on the journey towards a single construction regulator.
We must go further and build on the progress already made. Today we are announcing the first phase of work to ensure the higher-risk building regime is applied in a proportionate way, and that regulatory requirements are fit for purpose and complement the operational progress made by the BSR. Strengthening safety across the system remains our overriding priority, and these measures are designed to reinforce the safeguards that underpin the regime.
We are launching a consultation on how building control, both within the higher-risk regime and in some cases across the wider system, should apply to telecommunications building work. Our aim is to ensure residents can access modern digital infrastructure quickly, without compromising safety. By refining the approach to high-volume, lower-risk telecoms building work, we can improve decision making and safety outcomes, reduce pressure on the system, and enable the BSR to focus its expertise on the most complex and highest-risk activity. This will help maintain the rigorous safety standards rightly expected, while allowing essential works to proceed at pace.
We will also be consulting on further proposals to refine the application of the regime for high-volume, low-complexity work and to ensure that the system operates in a proportionate manner. Later in the spring, we will bring forward consultations on minor building work within homes and on existing fire doors. Building homes quickly and building them safely are not in conflict; that is why we are consulting on making the system more proportionate while keeping safety at its core. Throughout this process, we remain firmly committed to ensuring safety standards and oversight of the highest-risk work are not diluted. We will engage closely with the BSR, industry, technical experts, local authorities and residents as these proposals are developed.
These proposals reflect a commitment to appropriate levels of oversight, while freeing up regulatory resources to ensure the safe delivery of vital homes, and the refurbishment and remediation work this country needs.
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Woking Borough Council and Thurrock Council: Best Value Duty
This Government are committed to taking the action necessary to fix the foundations of local government. Today, I am updating the House on the steps we are taking to support two councils to recover and reform: Woking borough council and Thurrock council.
Woking borough council
Woking borough council has been under statutory intervention since May 2023 and, in December 2025, I published the commissioners’ fifth report, together with my response. I welcomed their assessment of continued progress in governance, housing, and commercial restructuring, and shared their concerns about the significant challenges ahead. To maintain stability and the council’s improvement progress, the Secretary of State reappointed Richard Carr as managing director commissioner, and Barry Scarr as finance commissioner. Sir Tony Redmond also remains as lead commissioner. Their appointments are in place until 24 May 2028 as a backstop, when the directions are set to expire. In practice, these appointments will lapse when Woking borough council is planned to be dissolved in 2027, as part of local government reorganisation in Surrey.
As the commissioners also note, local government reorganisation in Surrey adds urgency and complexity. In their next report, I would welcome their reflections on this process, including how Government can best support new councils in meeting their best value duty from day one and any urgent issues beyond the commissioners’ remit.
This report is published at an important stage for the council, following the Government’s announcement to provide in-principle £500 million of debt repayment support for the council in 2026-27. This is a difficult position for Government representing a significant and unprecedented commitment, made necessary in the context of Woking’s acute financial failure. The announcement of debt support reflects that Woking borough council holds exceptional unsupported debt linked to historic capital practices, and that there is a value for money case for acting to protect local and national taxpayers. Any support is subject to continued assurance of the council’s financial position; the council’s commitment to reduce debt locally as far as possible within its local capacity; and value for money for the local and national taxpayer.
As a Government, we made a clear and unambiguous commitment in our manifesto to act where previous Governments had failed by finally bringing the feudal leasehold system to an end. We did so on the basis of a firm conviction that it is only by extinguishing fully the historical iniquities on which the present leasehold system rests that we can ensure that the dream of home ownership is made real for millions of households across the country.
Today the Government have published the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee. This historic moment marks the beginning of the end for the feudal leasehold system that has tainted the dream of home ownership for so many.
The draft Bill will transform the experience of home ownership for millions of leaseholders across the country, modernise property law and deliver a modern housing market. It includes the following key provisions:
A new legal framework for commonhold to reform and reinvigorate this radical improvement on leasehold ownership;
A statutory restriction on new leasehold flats to ensure that in future commonhold is the default tenure;
A new process for converting to commonhold, aligned with wider enfranchisement processes to make conversion possible when at least 50% of qualifying leaseholders agree;
The abolition of leasehold forfeiture as a means of ensuring compliance with a lease agreement and its replacement with a fairer system;
The repeal of draconian powers relating to rent charges on freehold estates; and
The capping of ground rent for older leases at £250 per year, changing to a peppercorn after 40 years.
Reinvigorating commonhold
The draft Bill builds on the publication of the commonhold White Paper in March last year, which confirmed the detail of our commonhold reform programme and responded to the Law Commission thorough and expert review of commonhold law.
Commonhold is a modern home ownership structure that is used widely around the world. It is not merely an alternative to leasehold ownership, but a radical improvement on it. At the heart of the commonhold model is a simple principle: the people who should own buildings, and who should exercise control over their management, shared facilities and related costs, are not third-party landlords but the people who live in flats within them and have a direct stake in their upkeep.
In enabling flats to be owned on a freehold basis, commonhold ensures that the interests of homeowners are preserved in perpetuity rather than their value depreciating over time as it does under leasehold, and it transfers decision-making powers to homeowners so they will have a greater say over how their home is managed and the bills they pay, as well as flexibility to respond to the changing needs of their building and its residents.
Commonhold was introduced in England and Wales in 2004 through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, but for a variety of reasons it failed to establish itself and, as a result, there are fewer than 20 commonhold developments in existence today. The 2002 legal framework also quickly became outdated, owing to the fact it was ill-suited for use in larger or mixed-use developments.
The draft Bill will reinvigorate commonhold through the introduction of a comprehensive new legal framework based on the vast majority of the recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 2020 report. It will enable commonhold to be used in the widest possible range of settings, enhancing the rights and protections of consumers while also supporting the needs of developers and lenders.
Banning new leasehold flats
To ensure that commonhold becomes the default tenure, the draft Bill also includes provisions to ban the use of leasehold for new flats. Once enacted, this will ensure that, other than in exceptional circumstances, all flats are provided as commonhold, as is the case in large parts of the world. The provisions in the draft Bill are intended to work in tandem with the ban on the use of leasehold for new houses contained in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.
Alongside publication of the draft Bill today, we have published a “Moving to commonhold” consultation, seeking input from industry and consumers on precisely how we implement the new ban. The feedback received will ensure that we can proceed with a smooth transition to commonhold for new flats, while at the same time protecting the supply of new homes and determining whether there is a case for any justified exemptions.
Facilitating commonhold conversion
The draft Bill also includes measures to make it easier for existing leaseholders to convert their buildings to commonhold. The relevant provisions respond to proposals made by the Law Commission to make conversion more accessible by reducing the consent threshold for conversion.
The existing law sets out a process for conversion, but it is one that requires consent from everyone with an interest in the block. This sets an unacceptably high bar and means that commonhold is not achievable if even a single unit owner, lender or the existing freeholder objects. The draft Bill will introduce a new process for conversion—one that brings conversion into line with wider enfranchisement processes and will make conversion possible if at least 50% of qualifying leaseholders agree.
Abolishing forfeiture
The draft Bill also contains a number of vital reforms to the existing leasehold system that the previous Government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 left untouched. Chief among them are provisions to end the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture as a means of ensuring compliance with a lease agreement.
For too long, outdated forfeiture laws have allowed landlords to threaten people with losing their home and hard-earned equity over small debts of as little as £350, or any amount if left unpaid for three years. The draft Bill contains provisions to abolish forfeiture and introduce a modern, proportionate lease enforcement system that addresses breaches fairly, with appropriate safeguards and judicial oversight.
Repealing draconian powers relating to rent charges
To better protect homeowners on freehold estates, the draft Bill will repeal draconian enforcement powers that apply to estate rent charges on them. These powers, often difficult to find in deeds and poorly understood by buyers, can lead to rent charge owners taking possession of or granting a lease over a freehold home as a result of small sums outstanding. That is not just unfair, but creates real barriers to home ownership and property sales. The draft Bill will remove those powers and the unnecessary obstacles that drive up costs and uncertainty for freehold estate homeowners.
Capping ground rent
The Government are acutely aware that the cost of living remains a pressing concern for leaseholders across England and Wales and that those who remain subject to unfair and unreasonable practices need urgent relief.
That is why last summer we consulted, jointly with the Welsh Government, on a range of proposals to hold landlords and managing agents to account for the services they provide and the charges and fees they levy. At the heart of that consultation were measures to increase transparency over service charges and enhance access to redress, but it also included proposals to reform the section 20 “major works” procedure and strengthen regulation of managing agents. We thank all those who responded to the consultation and will set out details of how we intend to implement the measures in question as soon as possible.
However, the Government are determined to go further to alleviate the cost of living pressures facing leaseholders. In our manifesto, we committed to tackling unregulated and unaffordable ground rent charges, and the draft Bill honours that commitment.
Historically, ground rents, which often entail no service being provided whatsoever, were of low or nominal value. However, over the past two decades a practice has developed of freeholders including high and escalating ground rent clauses in leases. Such clauses are causing leaseholders considerable financial strain, and some are unable to sell or remortgage their properties as a result.
The draft Bill will cap ground rents at £250 per year initially, changing to a peppercorn after 40 years. This approach, which will apply to most long residential leases not already covered by existing legislation, will provide immediate financial relief for leaseholders with high and harmful ground rents, helping to support leaseholders currently struggling to get a mortgage, and removing unnecessary blockers to buying and selling. The longer-term change to a peppercorn cap will eliminate the two-tier market between new and older leases, delivering a fair and efficient modern housing market.
These reforms will necessarily have effects on existing contractual arrangements and investments, something that this Government do not undertake lightly. However, the Government have a mandate to tackle unregulated and unaffordable ground rent charges, and our approach has been designed to strike a fair balance between the interests of leaseholders, freeholders and investors, maintaining the reputation of the UK as a safe place to invest.
Rectifying flaws in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024
As set out in a previous written ministerial statement I made on this subject —[Official Report, 21 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 24WS.]—(HCWS244), the 2024 Act contains a small number of specific but serious flaws that prevent certain provisions from operating as intended and that need to be rectified via primary legislation.
Although this is not included in the draft Bill, our intention is to rectify those flaws in primary legislation. Among other things, this will allow us to commence the 2024 Act’s enfranchisement provisions. Valuation rates used to calculate the enfranchisement premium will be set by the Secretary of State in secondary legislation. We will consult on valuation rates as soon as possible, ahead of commencing the relevant provisions.
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Thurrock council
I am today publishing the commissioners’ most recent report which I received in November 2025. I am pleased to see the continued progress made by the council and that there has been a smooth transition to the new leadership. The report notes that financial management has improved, with more transparency in reporting and that the council is embracing external reviews and public engagement, indicating a cultural shift toward greater transparency. I am pleased the council continues to take the necessary steps locally to reduce its level of debt and to support financial improvement. Government are committed to providing debt repayment support to Thurrock and Woking councils, given their significant and exceptional unsupported debt linked to historic capital practices, and the value for money case for acting to protect local and national taxpayers. Any support for Thurrock council is subject to continued assurance of the council’s financial position; the council’s commitment to reduce debt locally as far as possible within its local capacity; and value for money for the local and national taxpayer.
The commissioners’ latest report also highlights some of the risks to improvement. It is important that that the council maintains its focus on improvement and transformation alongside the broader transformation programmes of local government reorganisation and devolution.
I also note that the commissioners support the council’s desire to be given the opportunity to appoint its own chief executive rather than the role being filled by a managing director commissioner. I am writing today to the leader of the council to confirm that I am content for the council to initiate a recruitment process for a chief executive. This is on the understanding that a suitable, experienced candidate can be recruited and that the commissioners will continue to support and guide the council throughout this process; and with the expectation that the progress made so far is embedded throughout the council and that the pace of improvement continues.
If a suitable candidate is appointed, I would expect a period of overlap with the existing managing director commissioner to enable a smooth transition and handover to take place. It is evident that ongoing commissioner support will be critical to ensure the council’s improvement trajectory is maintained. Following the conclusion of the recruitment process, I intend to review what further changes would be needed to ensure the commissioner team has capacity to provide sufficient support to the council, and assurance to Ministers.
Conclusion
I am committed to working with these councils to ensure their compliance with the best value duty and the high standards of governance that local residents expect. This Government are working to deliver a consistently fit, legal and decent local government sector that provides good quality essential statutory services for all residents.
I will deposit in the House Library copies of the documents referred to, which are being published on gov.uk today. I will update the House in due course.