In a statement published on GOV.UK, the government said it will bring forward legislation to limit charges faced by leaseholders and people living on freehold estates when they need a landlord's or estate manager's consent for routine matters. Ministers pointed to ordinary requests, such as keeping a pet, where residents can currently be asked to pay a fee without any reliable indication of cost and with little obvious external oversight. The proposal is presented as a consumer protection measure in a part of the housing market where the party granting permission can also set the charge. For households, the issue is not only the amount demanded but the lack of certainty before a request is made.
The legislative change would give the Secretary of State powers to introduce caps on permission fees that landlords would be required to follow. According to the government statement, those powers would also apply to privately managed estates, where freehold homeowners can face similar charges for modest cosmetic changes to their properties. That detail is important because it takes the reform beyond the conventional leasehold model. It also reaches estates where homeowners own the property outright but remain subject to management arrangements, permissions and related charges.
Ministers also said the legislation would enable action on administrative fees. These are the charges that can arise when a resident requests documents, seeks information, or simply notifies a landlord or manager of a change in mortgage provider. In practice, that would widen the reform from high-visibility permission requests to the routine paperwork that often accompanies ownership in managed developments. If used broadly, the power could affect a larger set of recurring charges than many residents first associate with leasehold reform.
The next step, as set out by the government, is a public consultation on which items should be capped and the level of the cap for each one. The policy direction has therefore been announced, but the detailed charging schedule has not yet been fixed. For leaseholders, freehold homeowners, landlords and managing agents, the consultation stage will be where the proposal becomes more concrete. The categories included, the ceiling applied to each charge and the treatment of exceptional cases will determine how far the change alters current practice.
A second part of the package concerns the conduct of property agents. The government said it intends to introduce independent regulation of property agents for the first time, affecting a market that shapes the day-to-day experience of leaseholders, tenants and homebuyers. According to the statement, a regulator would be able to set codes of practice, including standards of conduct and complaint handling. In policy terms, that would move oversight from a fragmented arrangement towards a single external framework.
The same model would require property agents to hold a licence and to have appropriate qualifications before carrying out the role. The proposed regulator would also be able to remove licences where agents fail to meet the required standards. That would amount to a marked compliance change for the sector. For consumers, the intended effect is clearer accountability and more consistent service standards. For firms and individual agents, it would introduce entry requirements, ongoing obligations and the risk of formal sanction where standards are not met.
The government said the wider package is intended to strengthen control and protections for more than 5 million existing leaseholders, alongside future homeowners. Ministers have not yet published the draft legislation or the final design of the regulatory system, and further detail has been promised in due course. The practical effect will depend on what the legislation covers, how tightly any fee caps are set and how broad the regulator's remit proves to be. Even so, the direction of policy is now clearer: routine housing management charges and the conduct of property agents are being moved towards closer statutory control.