Leasehold Reform and the Cost of Unsafe Buildings

For many leaseholders, building safety has never felt like an abstract policy debate. It shows up in waking watch patrols, eye-watering insurance premiums, delayed sales, and letters demanding payment for works they never caused and cannot control.

Leasehold reform was already on the political agenda long before Grenfell. Building safety has since pushed it from a slow-burn reform project into something far more urgent. When serious defects are identified, the leasehold model determines who holds the power, who controls decisions, and who ultimately carries the risk when things go wrong.

Recent building safety legislation has shifted some responsibility back towards developers and landlords. That change matters and is significant. Yet the experience on the ground remains uneven. Protections exist, although they often arrive wrapped in certificates, legal tests, and prolonged disputes over eligibility and liability.

Service charges sit at the centre of this tension. They were always the route through which building costs flowed. Building safety has simply magnified the sums involved and intensified the consequences. Interim measures, investigations, professional fees, and remediation programmes continue to pass through the same mechanism, even where residents are theoretically shielded from paying for certain works.

This is where leasehold reform and building safety truly collide. Reform is not only about extending leases more cheaply or simplifying enfranchisement. It raises deeper questions about whether the people living in buildings have any meaningful influence over how safety risks are identified, prioritised, and funded.

The growing focus on commonhold sits firmly in this space. Moving away from a structure where a separate freeholder controls the building towards one where residents collectively own and manage it alters the balance of responsibility. In theory, it aligns decision-making with lived reality. In practice, it also introduces challenges around capability, governance, and the long-term stewardship of complex residential buildings.

For residents living in unsafe buildings today, these policy discussions can feel frustratingly distant. Remediation timelines stretch on. Sales stall. Mortgage offers expire. While the legal framework continues to evolve, daily life often remains caught in uncertainty.

This is why Cladding Matters continues to return to these themes. Building safety is not simply a technical or legal issue. It is a human one, shaped by ownership structures and the power dynamics embedded within them.

Tomorrow’s discussion will explore how leasehold reform is unfolding alongside the building safety regime, and whether the two are genuinely beginning to align. It will consider what has changed, what remains unresolved, and where residents continue to feel exposed.

Gareth Wax will be in the chair, with Hamish McLay and Stephen Day contributing to the conversation. Together, the discussion will examine how reform reads on paper and how it plays out inside buildings that are still waiting for clarity.

Cladding Matters goes live tomorrow. Viewers are encouraged to join live, share comments, or catch up afterwards.

Watch live or catch up on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@SpillingTheProper-Tea

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