Commonhold’s real test is not the law. It is whether people are ready to make it work

The Government’s draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, published in January 2026, is designed to reinvigorate commonhold and make it the default tenure for new flats, while the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee is currently scrutinising the detail before legislation is introduced formally. Alongside that, the Government is also consulting on banning new leasehold flats. In policy terms, the direction of travel is clear. Commonhold is no longer a theoretical alternative. It is being positioned as part of the future of home ownership in England and Wales. 

Why legal reform alone isn’t enough

Structure alone does not create success. 

That was the clearest lesson from this episode of Built Managed Lived., which explored commonhold from an owner led perspective through the practical experience of Peter Scott, a director of a resident owned freehold company in Kensington, and the legal insight of Shabnam Ali-Khan, a specialist in residential leasehold law. Their discussion landed on a truth that often gets lost in the politics of reform: whatever legal model sits on paper, shared living only works when people are willing to participate, understand their obligations, and trust the governance around them. 

That matters because commonhold is often presented as the clean solution to the failures of leasehold. In some respects, it is. The draft reforms build on the Government’s 2025 Commonhold White Paper and are intended to replace a system long criticised for opacity, weak accountability, and misaligned incentives. The Government has been explicit that it wants to bring the “feudal leasehold system” to an end and establish commonhold as the default tenure for flats.

Ownership vs Stewardship

The podcast conversation makes clear that the real dividing line is not simply leasehold versus commonhold. It is passive ownership versus active stewardship.

Peter’s account of how his building operates is important for that reason. Although it is not a commonhold, it reflects many of the feature’s reformers want to see more widely: local control, elected directors, clear representation, open communication, and long-term planning. In his building, owner engagement is not universal, but it is structured. There is a board, an owners’ committee, a ten-year maintenance plan, and a relationship with a professional managing agent that supports rather than replaces owner accountability. Trust comes not from sentiment, but from transparency. 

That is a more useful insight than the simplistic idea that resident control automatically produces harmony. It does not. Shared ownership models still involve disagreement, uneven engagement, difficult personalities, and hard choices. What makes them workable is the presence of credible processes for handling those realities. 

That is where the discussion becomes especially valuable for the commonhold debate.

Conflict, governance and the reality of shared living

Commonhold has existed since 2002, yet uptake has remained extremely limited. The current reform programme is intended to address that by modernising the legal framework, improving lender confidence, and making conversion easier in some circumstances. The draft bill and its accompanying guide explain that commonhold was originally designed to solve a longstanding problem in English and Welsh property law: how to allow freehold style ownership of flats while still enforcing the positive obligations needed to manage shared structures and spaces.  

However, one of the most revealing moments in the podcast is the challenge to the assumption that a new legal model will automatically feel easier for homeowners. For many people, buying a flat is not an ideological act. It is a practical one. They want security, predictability and a quiet life. Commonhold promises greater control, but control also brings responsibility. It asks more of owners, not less. It assumes a level of engagement that many households, understandably, may not be ready for. 

That does not mean commonhold is the wrong answer. It means reform must be honest about what success requires. 

First, it requires education. Shabnam makes this point powerfully. The biggest weakness in any shared ownership model is not always bad faith. Often it is misunderstanding. People do not always know what they have bought, what they are responsible for, why they pay towards shared costs, or how decisions are made. The draft commonhold model is meant to improve on the ambiguity of traditional leases through a more standardised commonhold community statement, but even a clearer document will only help if buyers engage with it and professionals explain it properly.  

Second, it requires proportionate support for directors. One of the questions raised in current consultation and scrutiny is whether directors of commonhold associations should have access to training. That feels less like a technical issue and more like a crucial test of whether reform is rooted in reality. Volunteer governance can be empowering, but it can also be daunting. If the new regime depends on ordinary homeowners stepping into roles that involve compliance, budgeting, communication and risk management, then support cannot be optional in practice, even if formal mandates remain light touch.  

Third, it requires a mature understanding of the role of managing agents. One of the more grounded themes in the episode is that owner led does not have to mean self-managed. In fact, for many buildings, it should not. Professional management remains essential. The point is not to remove expertise from the system, but to rebalance the relationship between expertise and accountability. A good managing agent can handle the operational machinery, but owners still need to stay engaged, ask questions, and make decisions. Delegating tasks is not the same as outsourcing responsibility. 

Finally, it requires realism about pace.

The scale of change and the need for realism

The reform agenda is significant, but the starting point is still a system with millions of leasehold homes. The Government’s own materials acknowledge the scale of that existing market, while the committee scrutiny process is still testing how the draft bill would work in practice. Even if new leasehold flats are ultimately banned and commonhold becomes the default for future development, the transition will take time.  

That is why the most constructive contribution this podcast makes is not to present commonhold as a silver bullet. It is to bring the conversation back to behaviour, governance and culture. 

The real question is not whether commonhold is conceptually better than leasehold, but whether buildings are set up to support the habits that make collective ownership succeed: clarity, accountability, participation, transparency and a willingness to balance individual preference with shared responsibility. 

Those are not secondary issues. They are the whole point. 

If commonhold is to grow this time, it will not be because the legislation alone is more elegant. It will be because policymakers, professionals, managing agents and homeowners all recognise the same thing: better structures matter, but better outcomes still depend on people. 

That is the central insight from this discussion, and perhaps the most important one for the wider sector. We can change the tenure model by statute. We cannot legislate trust, engagement or judgement into existence. Those have to be built.