Freehold Estate Charges: Reform Is Coming—Have Your Say
Two linked consultations both published on 18 December 2025 and open until 12 March 2026 are designed to do two things at once. Protect existing homeowners and reduce the reliance on private estate management arrangements in future developments.
At the heart of this is the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (“LAFRA”), which received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024. The Act includes a new framework intended to give freehold homeowners on managed estates protections that look much more like those leaseholders already have but much of it can’t operate fully until secondary legislation is put in place.
Why estate management charges are so contentious
On many modern housing estates, shared infrastructure and amenities roads, drainage, sewers, green spaces, play areas and communal landscaping are not adopted by the local authority or utilities. Instead, a private estate management company (or a resident-controlled company using a managing agent) maintains those amenities and recovers the cost from homeowners via an estate management charge. This is now a mainstream model in new-build delivery, not a niche exception.
The Government’s second consultation points to the scale of the issue. There may be up to 1.75 million homes on privately managed estates in England (not all paying charges), and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that 80% of new homes sold by the 11 biggest builders in 2021–2022 were subject to estate management charges.
The practical complaints from homeowners are familiar across conveyancing and property management:
- Opaque budgeting and limited breakdown of what is being charged for.
- Limited rights to information (and fees for providing it).
- Little leverage over quality and standards of work.
- Disproportionate enforcement risks in some cases when arrears arise.
The legal backdrop: an Act that needs “switching on”
While the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 is now on the statute book, the House of Commons Library notes that most provisions are not yet in force and many require further consultation and secondary legislation before commencement.
That is why these consultations matter. They are explicitly about how the new protections should work in practice, what information must be provided, in what format, on what timescales, and how disputes and enforcement should be handled.
Consultation 1: Enhanced protections for homeowners on freehold estates
This consultation is the Government’s detailed blueprint for implementing key elements of Part 5 of the 2024 Act, plus some additional reforms. It is not just about “better paperwork”, it also tackles enforcement and accountability head-on.
1) Standard form annual reporting, budgets and demands
A central theme is standardisation. Homeowners should be able to see, in a consistent format, what the estate manager did, what it cost, and what is planned next.
- Annual report: the consultation proposes that estate managers must provide an annual report within one month of the end of the accounting period, with prescribed minimum information (and the option to provide more).
- Standardised demand form: the Government proposes a prescribed demand template with minimum information such as the amount payable, the period covered, payment deadlines, and consequences of non-payment (again, managers can add more detail).
- Budget disclosure: one of the key questions is where and how the budget should be provided. The Government’s preferred approach is to include the budget as part of the demand form, covering the previous and current accounting periods, even if the forward-looking element is an estimate.
A notable operational point is that the consultation recognises that estate managers may choose to combine documents (for example, sending the annual report alongside the demand) to reduce administrative friction.
2) Consultation before “major works”
If you are familiar with leasehold Section 20 consultation for major works, the Government is openly modelling the estate framework on that approach. The consultation says the 2024 Act “transposes” the broad leasehold major works framework but keeps flexibility to tailor it to estates.
The headline proposal is a £600 per homeowner threshold to trigger mandatory consultation (aligned with proposals for leaseholders in a related charges consultation). The consultation also flags a second threshold based on the total value of works, aimed at capturing high-value projects on larger estates even if the per-home share is below the per-home trigger.
Crucially, the consultation also indicates that failure to follow the consultation process can restrict what the estate manager is able to recover from homeowners (effectively capping recoverability to the relevant threshold).
3) Stronger rights to information—on request
Another major plank is information rights. The consultation acknowledges that homeowners currently have limited access to management information and that access often depends on voluntary policies or corporate structures (for example, whether a resident management company exists and how it operates).
Under sections 80 and 81 of the 2024 Act, the Government is consulting on regulations specifying what information must be produced on request, and in what circumstances. The intent is clear. Homeowners should be able to inspect documents tied to both expenditure and management/maintenance decisions, not simply receive a headline invoice.
4) Removing “draconian” enforcement remedies for arrears
This is the part that often surprises homeowners (and sometimes lenders and buyers) when it surfaces during a sale. The consultation highlights how sections 121 and 122 of the Law of Property Act 1925 can allow rentcharge owners to take extreme steps such as taking possession or granting a lease even for minor arrears and without notice. It describes these remedies as “outdated and wholly disproportionate,” and says they create risks for homeowners and can delay property sales.
The Government’s direction of travel is to repeal these provisions (via primary legislation) and introduce a notice requirement before enforcement can begin.
5) Tribunal oversight and the option to replace a failing manager
The consultation summarises the 2024 Act’s intent to give homeowners the ability to challenge the reasonableness of estate management charges and administration charges at the tribunal, and where there is serious management failure to apply for the tribunal appointment of a substitute manager.
The mechanics are being consulted on, but the policy direction is toward meaningful redress, not just better disclosure.
Consultation 2: Reducing the prevalence of private estate management arrangements
If Consultation 1 is about consumer protections on existing estates, Consultation 2 is about the upstream drivers of why so many new estates end up privately managed and unadopted.
The Government’s stated aims include:
- Increasing adoption of amenities by public authorities and reducing reliance on private management.
- Introducing common standards for adoptable amenities.
- Exploring mandatory adoption for certain amenities (with exceptions considered for premium/exclusive features).
- Removing perverse incentives that make non-adoption attractive to developers.
- Improving transparency, data and dispute resolution.
- Considering prohibitions on embedded management arrangements and promoting resident-controlled management for new developments.
This is a bigger systems question than disclosure templates. It goes directly to the economics of development, local authority capacity, and the long-term sustainability (and perceived legitimacy) of passing infrastructure liabilities to homeowners.
Why this matters now (and who should respond)
These consultations will not rewrite the system overnight, but they are a live opportunity to influence what secondary legislation will look like in practice, and how far the Government goes on adoption and new-estate design.
Homeowners may want to focus on what would make documents and processes genuinely usable, minimum information that answers “what am I paying for?”, workable timescales, fair thresholds for major works, and meaningful access to underlying documents.
Developers will want to assess how options like mandatory adoption, common standards, or restrictions on embedded management could affect viability, handover risk, and long-term estate design.
Estate managers and managing agents should look closely at implementation details especially the cost of compliance, system changes, and transition arrangements because the consultation explicitly invites evidence on practicality and proportionality.
Conveyancers and property professionals will recognise the wider implication: better standardised information and clearer enforcement rules can reduce transaction friction, improve lender confidence, and help buyers understand ongoing liabilities earlier in the process, particularly where privately managed amenities and estate rentcharges are involved.
Bottom line
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 set the direction of travel; these consultations are about making that direction real. With both consultations open until 12 March 2026, the Government is explicitly asking homeowners, developers, and the property sector to help shape a framework that is clearer, more transparent, and more enforceable in a balanced way.
Consultations:
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