Mandatory qualifications for all property management professionals will be required under new government proposals.

A long-awaited consultation on leasehold reform contains a plan to ensure all managing agents have to be qualified in line with part of Lord Best’s RoPA (Regulation of Property Agents) recommendations.

Wild west

And leaseholders will be given the power to demand a change of managing agent, under the plan after Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook (main picture) described the current situation as the “wild west”.

“It is very easy to set yourself up as a managing agent. A group of us could do it just by renting an office on top of a newsagent in the high street … we know there are really bad practices out there,” he told The Guardian.

It is a bit of a wild west at the minute.”

“Managing agents play a key role in multiple-occupancy buildings, and will play an even bigger role in the future, but it is a bit of a wild west at the minute.”

And the consultation document says: the plan is: “Introducing mandatory qualifications for managing agents to ensure that all agents have the knowledge and skills they need to provide a good service for leaseholders.”

Abuse and poor service

Leaseholders will have “the power to demand a switch or veto a landlord’s choice of managing agent and introduce mandatory qualifications for the role to stamp out bad practice in line with Lord Best’s 2019 recommendations”.

This reform will “put an end to leaseholders and residential freeholders suffering abuse and poor service”.a

The Government says the proposed measures will “switch on” measures in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, and help leaseholders hold landlords to account.

In more detail, the Government also proposes:

• Better service charge transparency, including new standardised service charge demand forms, annual reports, service charge accounts and administration charges
• Improving buildings insurance transparency, including what information should be provided to leaseholders, so they have assurance they are getting fair value and are better able to challenge any unreasonable insurance charges
• Rebalancing the litigation costs regime and removing barriers for leaseholders to challenge their landlord
• Reforming the section 20 ‘major works’ procedure that leaseholders must go through when they face large bills for such works
• Considering the case for greater protections for leaseholders paying fixed service charges, protections for client money, or improvements to the process for appointing a manager in cases of serious management failure
• Opportunities to encourage the provision of information and services digitally to be more accessible and reduce costs, but also ensuring safeguards so that all leaseholders receive the information they need

The full consultation is available here

More on leasehold