The King's Speech - Property Industry Reaction
On leasehold reform
Sim Sekhon, Group CEO at LegalforLandlords, commented:
- "Leasehold reform may benefit homeowners, but the government's real challenge is delivering fairer protections without undermining investment confidence or triggering wider financial consequences across the housing market."
"Any further reform of the leasehold system is likely to be welcomed by leaseholders, but there is also a real risk of unintended financial consequences for landlords, freeholders and even pension funds exposed to ground rent investments.
Measures such as capping ground rents and reducing enfranchisement premiums could significantly impact long-term asset values and income streams, particularly for landlords who have structured investments around existing lease agreements. In some cases, freeholders could effectively face a double financial hit through both reduced rental income and lower enfranchisement values.
The key challenge for the government will be striking a fair balance between improving protections for leaseholders while avoiding reforms that create market instability, discourage investment or inadvertently impact consumers through weaker pension fund performance and reduced housing sector confidence.
On building safety and remediation
Sián Hemming-Metcalfe, Operations Director at Inventory Base, commented:
- "Building safety reform will ultimately be judged not by the number of new regulations introduced, but by how quickly unsafe buildings are actually remediated and returned safely to residents."
"The industry is no longer questioning the need for building safety reform. The real test now is whether the government can deliver a system that accelerates remediation instead of slowing it down through complexity, inconsistency and procedural bottlenecks.
The direction of travel is broadly supported, particularly where it creates clearer accountability, stronger resident protections and a genuine focus on resolving unsafe buildings faster. But confidence across the sector increasingly depends on whether the regulatory framework can operate consistently, proportionately and at the pace required to deal with the scale of remediation still facing the market.
The challenge now is less about announcing further reform and more about making the machinery of delivery work in practice. Across the sector there are still concerns around overlapping processes, unclear expectations, delays in decision-making and the growing administrative burden attached to compliance and safety case management. Even the regulator has acknowledged that elements of the current regime are not operating as originally intended.
Residents need safer buildings, but they also need a system that can distinguish between critical life-safety risks and procedural friction. The next phase of reform has to focus on proportionality, transparency and practical implementation, otherwise there is a real risk that remediation slows under the weight of the process designed to support it.
Ultimately, success will be measured less by the number of new powers introduced and more by whether unsafe buildings are actually identified, remediated and returned to residents with greater certainty, at scale and without years of operational paralysis."
