Brocade
TL;DR: Two separate reform tracks are moving through Parliament in 2026, and both land on people who run existing leaseholder-managed buildings. The draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill (£250 ground rent cap, abolition of forfeiture, commonhold as the default for new flats) is in pre-legislative scrutiny. The Remediation Bill, announced in the King's Speech, adds an 11-18 metre building register and puts a remediation duty squarely on the Responsible Person. Nothing here is law yet. This is what is coming and how to get ahead of it.
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Two Bills, One Reader
There is a lot of noise about leasehold reform right now, and most of it blurs two distinct pieces of legislation. Keeping them apart is the first step to acting sensibly.
The first is the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, published on 27 January 2026 (Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, draft, 2026). It changes the ownership and governance model: ground rent, forfeiture, and the long-term shift from leasehold to commonhold. The House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee scrutinised it and published its report on 27 May 2026, calling for significant amendments before a final Bill is introduced.
The second is the Remediation Bill, announced in the King's Speech on 13 May 2026. It did not go through the committee's pre-legislative scrutiny; it is a separate track. It is about building safety remediation: who must fix unsafe cladding, by when, and what happens if they do not.
Nothing in either Bill is in force. The Commonhold Bill is still a draft awaiting a government response; the Remediation Bill has been announced but not yet enacted.
Both reach the same person: a director of a Right to Manage (RTM) company or a Residents' Management Company (RMC), or the managing agent who runs the building day to day. If that is you, the practical question is the same for both Bills: what should I have in place before this becomes law?
Where the Commonhold Bill Stands
The draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill is a draft. It has not been enacted, and you cannot rely on any of its provisions today. The government's ministerial statement set out six key provisions (Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, draft, 2026):
- a new legal framework for commonhold;
- a statutory restriction on new leasehold flats, so commonhold becomes the default tenure for new blocks;
- a process to convert to commonhold aligned with enfranchisement, possible when at least 50% of qualifying leaseholders agree (Clause 6);
- the abolition of leasehold forfeiture, replaced with a fairer enforcement system;
- the repeal of certain rentcharge powers on freehold estates; and
- a cap on ground rent for existing leases.
The committee broadly backed the direction but said the draft Bill under-delivers on short-term relief. The timeline matters here. The government has two months from 27 May to respond to the committee, and a final Bill will follow "as soon as possible" after that (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 221). The committee did not pin down a firm date, and neither will we.
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The £250 Ground Rent Cap on Existing Leases
The cap applies to existing long leases. New leasehold flats were already moved to a peppercorn ground rent by the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, so this is the intervention aimed at leases already in place.
The draft Bill would cap ground rent on existing long leases at £250 a year, transitioning to a peppercorn after a 40-year period.
The committee agreed with the £250 figure, noting it is "a threshold where ground rent frequently affects the saleability and mortgageability of properties" (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 64). It was less convinced by the 40-year transition to peppercorn, saying the government "has not presented sufficient evidence to justify why 40 years is the optimum period" (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 7 of conclusions).
For an RTM or RMC director, the ground rent cap is mostly a matter that sits between leaseholders and the freeholder, not a service charge line. But it changes the building's financial backdrop, and you will field questions. A leaseholder paying £450 a year in ground rent will want to know whether the cap helps them and when. The honest answer, today, is: the cap is proposed, not law, and the transition timing is still being argued over.
Abolition of Forfeiture Changes the Enforcement Backdrop
Forfeiture is the landlord's power to end a lease and take back the property where a leaseholder breaches lease terms, including unpaid service charges. The draft Bill abolishes it and replaces it with "a fairer system" of lease enforcement (Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, draft, 2026). The Minister told the committee that the forfeiture measures "will commence as soon as possible following Royal Assent" (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 221, Box 5).
For directors who recover service charges, this is worth tracking. Forfeiture has long been the ultimate backstop for non-payment, even though it is rarely used. If it goes, recovery will rest more heavily on clear, defensible records: the demand, the breakdown of what was charged, the consultation where one was required, and the chain of correspondence. A building that can show exactly what it billed, why, and when is in a far stronger position than one relying on the threat of forfeiture.
Commonhold: A Long Transition, Not an Overnight Switch
Commonhold is a tenure where flat owners hold their units outright and collectively own and run the common parts through a commonhold association, with no third-party landlord (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 165). The draft Bill makes it the default for new flats and creates a route for existing blocks to convert.
The transition will take years. As the committee put it, "the transition from leasehold to commonhold will take many years" (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 235). Existing leaseholders cannot convert automatically; they must complete a collective enfranchisement (buy the freehold) and then vote to convert, a two-step process the committee wants streamlined. To promote uptake, the committee recommended that conversion to commonhold become "the default outcome of a collective enfranchisement" (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 153). That is a committee recommendation, not yet a provision in the draft Bill, so treat it as a likely direction of travel rather than settled law.
One point matters now for anyone weighing conversion. When a building converts to commonhold, the directors of the commonhold association "take on a range of statutory duties for maintenance and safety of the block," including ensuring the building is registered with the Building Safety Regulator and verifying safety information before signing declarations (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 161). Those are personal duties. If you are a director thinking about commonhold, the building safety obligations come with you.
Commonhold Does Not End the Managing Agent's Role
There is a popular reading of commonhold that says leaseholders will self-manage and managing agents disappear. The committee took the opposite view.
Managing agents will also continue to play a key role under the commonhold regime, as it is likely that many commonhold associations will opt to contract with them for services rather than run the blocks themselves, especially in larger and more complex blocks.
— HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 116
What changes is the contracting relationship. Today a managing agent is often appointed by the freeholder. Under commonhold, the agent is contracted by the unit-holders' association directly. The work does not vanish; the accountability shifts, and the committee expects these contracts to run for several years. For a managing agent, the practical implication is that you will increasingly answer to a board of resident-directors who can see what you are doing. That is the same relationship an RTM or RMC already creates, and the agents who do well in it are the ones who can show their work.
The Remediation Bill: A New Duty, and a Register That Reaches Below 18 Metres
The Remediation Bill is the second track, and for building safety it is the more immediate one. It was announced in the King's Speech on 13 May 2026 as "a Bill to speed up remediation for people living in homes with unsafe cladding" (King's Speech 2026, gov.uk). Legal analysis of the announcement sets out that it "introduces a legal duty on responsible persons, such as freeholders, to identify, assess and remediate their buildings without delay, with sanctions including criminal prosecution for the most severe failures" (Hogan Lovells, King's Speech 2026 analysis).
Three provisions matter most for people running existing buildings:
- An 11-18 metre register. The Bill would create "a new register of all medium-rise buildings between 11 and 18 metres requiring remediation" (Hogan Lovells, 2026). This is the part that extends relevance below the 18-metre higher-risk building line. A building too short to be a registered HRB can still land on this register.
- A mandated external-wall assessment methodology. The Bill mandates "a nationally consistent framework for how external wall assessments are carried out" (Hogan Lovells, 2026), replacing the patchwork of approaches that has slowed remediation.
- A remediation backstop. Where a Responsible Person fails to act, the Bill "enables a third party (such as Homes England) to step in and carry out the remediation work itself" (Hogan Lovells, 2026), backed by cost-recovery measures.
The deadlines are concrete. High-rise residential buildings needing external cladding remediation must be completed by the end of 2029, and all residential buildings taller than 11 metres by 2031 (Hogan Lovells, 2026). The backdrop is slow progress: only 35% of identified buildings have had cladding remediated since 2017, with regulators taking enforcement action at more than 800 buildings (Hogan Lovells, 2026).
The 11-18 metre register and the Responsible Person remediation duty pull medium-rise stock into the same accountability frame that already applies to higher-risk buildings.
If you manage a building in the 11-18 metre band with an external wall system that has been flagged, the practical takeaway is that 'we are below 18 metres' will stop being an answer. The register makes the building visible, and the remediation duty makes someone accountable for acting on it.
What You Need to Do Now
Both Bills are pre-enactment, so there is nothing to file and no deadline to hit yet. But the work that puts you ahead is the same work in both cases: be able to evidence the state of your building and the decisions you have made about it. Here is where to focus.
- Know your building's height and wall make-up. If you are anywhere near the 11-18 metre band, find out the exact height and whether the external wall system has ever been assessed or flagged. The 11-18m register will be built from exactly this information.
- Get your service charge records demand-ready. With forfeiture going, recovery leans on clean records. Each demand should have its breakdown, its Section 20 consultation where one applied, and a clear audit trail. Our service charge demand template covers the basics.
- Treat building safety records as a transferable asset. Whether you convert to commonhold, hand to a new agent, or face a remediation duty, the building's safety history has to travel intact. A golden thread of who did what, when, and with what evidence is the thing every one of these reforms assumes you have.
- If you are weighing commonhold, plan for personal director duties. Commonhold-association directors take on BSR registration and safety-verification duties personally (HCLG Committee report, 2026, para 161). Go in with eyes open.
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Where Brocade Fits
Brocade is built around three things an RTM director, RMC director, or managing agent has to do at once: run the building, stay compliant, and manage the money. Both Bills push on all three.
The Commonhold Bill changes governance and finance: clean service charge records, defensible demands, and a transferable history of decisions. The Remediation Bill puts a record-keeping and accountability duty on the Responsible Person, exactly the role Brocade's audit-trail and evidence-chain features are designed to serve. Every significant action in Brocade is logged with a checksum-chained audit event, so the question 'can you show what was done and when?' has an answer that holds up. That is what a remediation duty, a commonhold conversion, and a service charge dispute all eventually come down to.
You do not need to act on either Bill today. You do need the building's records to be in the shape that makes acting on them straightforward when the law lands.
Common Questions
Is the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill now law?
No. A draft was published on 27 January 2026 for pre-legislative scrutiny. The Commons committee reported on 27 May 2026, the government must respond within two months, and a final Bill follows after that. Nothing in the draft is in force yet.
What is the £250 ground rent cap?
The draft Bill would cap ground rent on existing long leases at £250 a year, transitioning to a peppercorn (effectively zero) after 40 years. The committee supported the £250 figure but questioned the 40-year transition. New leasehold flats were already moved to peppercorn ground rent by the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022.
Does commonhold mean RTM and RMC directors no longer need a managing agent?
No. The committee concluded at paragraph 116 that many commonhold associations will still contract managing agents, especially for larger or more complex blocks. Commonhold changes who hires the agent, not whether one is needed.
What is the Remediation Bill's 11-18m register?
The Remediation Bill, announced in the King's Speech on 13 May 2026, would create a register of all medium-rise buildings between 11 and 18 metres that need cladding remediation, alongside a duty on Responsible Persons to identify, assess and remediate, and a backstop letting a third party such as Homes England step in if they stall.
Will the Remediation Bill affect buildings under 18 metres?
Yes. The 11-18 metre register and the Responsible Person remediation duty extend formal accountability below the 18-metre higher-risk-building threshold into medium-rise stock, so managers of buildings that sit outside the BSR registration regime may still face new record-keeping obligations.
Further Reading
- Building Safety Act 2026: Key Changes Every Higher-Risk Building Manager Must Know
- Service Charges and Building Safety Costs: A Guide for RTM Directors
- RTM Companies and BSA Compliance Obligations
- HCLG Committee report: Pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill (27 May 2026)
This article is for informational purposes and reflects two Bills that are not yet law. For building-specific advice, consult a qualified fire safety or property professional.