Episode 7: Mid-year Momentum: Mairead McErlean on a busy 2026 so far

Mairead: Hello, and welcome to episode seven of Built, Managed, Lived. I’m your host Mairead McErlean and in a slight change to our usual format, today I will be kicking things off before handing over to Charlotte Davis, our head of communications at FirstPort, is going to be turning the tables and leading the conversation. For this episode we’re doing something a little different as I’m going to be stepping into the guest seat. Charlotte will be chatting with me as we reflect on the first six months of Built, Managed, Lived, revisit some of the key themes we’ve explored so far, and look ahead to what’s on the horizon for the rest of the year. Particularly the trends shaping the way residential buildings are managed. So without further ado, I shall hand over to Charlotte to get it started.

Charlotte: Thank you Mairead. So Mairead, many of our listeners will know you as the regular host of Built, Managed, Lived. But you’re also an experienced property lawyer with very extensive knowledge of the regulatory landscape that governs our industry and the wider sector. Can you tell us a bit about your career and your current role at FirstPort?

Mairead: Ooh. Hard to do that without revealing too much about my age Charlotte but I’ll jump in and tell you that I qualified as a solicitor in 2004. I spent the first 18 or so years of my career in private practice law with a practice that covered mainly commercial disputes but with a particular emphasis on things to do with property and alongside I did what I think was some very interesting property related work. I did the first registration  of common land for a parish council which involved digging out all the original deeds of enclosure from the 16 and 1700s. And these were huge, huge documents and I mean that physically huge documents that we had to copy type, we had to photograph, and eventually the land registry sent people out to view the originals before we were able to register the common land. And those original documents are now housed in a local museum. So, I’ve done kind of weird and wonderful property things that lots of people won’t have had the chance to experience. And after 18 years in private practice, in 2021, I made the move into in-house law when I joined FirstPort as a senior legal council. At that time it was just the start of the building safety act in the regulatory sphere and we were quite heavily involved in the drafting and commentary on that. And that was my first introduction to being involved in the early stages of legislative drafting. So, I spent 5 years at FirstPort. I’ve moved through some different roles during my time here. My original role was very much aligned with my previous practice dealing with property related disputes. I then moved into a compliance role and most recently, the legal team have returned to the fold so I’m now the head of legal compliance and regulatory affairs.

Charlotte: Brilliant and in those 5 years that you’ve been at FirstPort, what would you say is, I mean there’s been so much change hasn’t there in terms of the regulatory landscape. What would you say has been the biggest change?

Mairead: Up until recently, the building safety act. If you go back to 2021, there was no real regulator within the property management sector. So the building safety regulator was the first of a number of regulators that are now coming into play. So, the building safety act changed everything in construction, in property management, in the way that people live in buildings. So that’s the biggest change that since then as we’ve discussed on other podcasts, Ofgem have become a regulator that we’re involved in because the business manages developments which have heat networks which are now within the regulatory sphere of that regulator. So it’s a real period of professionalization and change within the sector.

Charlotte: Yep, and a lot more change to come.

Mairead: Absolutely, there is a lot more change to come.

Charlotte: So it’s obviously been a very busy 2026 so far. Obviously there’s been lots and lots of change. And a lot of it you’ve already discussed on the previous episodes which are available to go back and listen to. What are some of the key industry topics you’ve been working across over the past few months?

Mairead: Well, we launched Built, Managed, Lived with a podcast on the energy act which as I’ve just mentioned that’s bringing heat networks within the regulation of Ofgem. So that was our starting point. We’ve looked at residential personal emergency evacuation plans which came into force in April. And we’ve been looking forward to commonhold because we had the draft bill published in January and that’s now going through the legislative process. So, it has been busy. It’s been really interesting. And there is a lot more to come.

Charlotte: I know obviously you’ve mentioned about commonhold and that being a really big change for the industry at the moment and obviously that’s something that those homeowners and industry professionals will be keeping an eye on. But, if you can look into the future, what developments do you see happening for the industry over the next few months.

Mairead: Well commonhold is going to progress. The current government has been clear that they want to end leasehold which effectively means implement commonhold by the end of the current parliament which is projected to be 2029. The bill is going through the legislative scrutiny stage. We’re expecting a report back from government probably towards the end of July or early August. They’ll then be a bit of a break over the summer recess and it will then continue on it’s journey through parliament. We will find out what’s going to go in, what’s not going to make it into the bill towards the end of this year. But commonhold is the only thing that is going to be changing. The building remediation Wales act was passed last year. The government are currently consulting on the implementation provisions for that so we’re going to see more in the building safety sector. In addition to that, the government introduced the remediation acceleration plan in December of 2025. So we’re expecting more regulations to implement that and really push forward remediation of buildings. We got the leasehold and freehold reform act 2024 which was passed in the last parliament. But most of that act hasn’t been implemented yet. It needs additional statutory instruments to implement it. The indication that we’ve had from government is that we will start seeing those statutory instruments coming forward towards the end of this year. We don’t know exactly what parts of that those are going to cover, but we suspect based on questions that we’ve been asked by the government departments that it’s likely to be around standardisation of certain documents like service charge bills and budgets.

Charlotte: It’s interesting. Interesting you mentioned building safety. How different does it look in terms of the devolved governments. I mean they’re all different aren’t they with how they approach them.

Mairead: The rules are very different. The rules in respect of clogging have got some similarities but what’s captured within the building safety act in England is wider than just adding remediation. So for some time England has been a little bit further ahead than the other devolved nations. Building safety Wales. The remit of that act is wider and they are looking to bring forward change at a faster pace. Scotland, the situation there, different again. So there is some commonality. The government and everyone in the industry wants buildings to be safe for people to live in. How we implement that and the timeframes for implementing that do differ.

Charlotte: So at the time we’re recording this, it’s a very interesting political landscape at the moment. We’re awaiting confirmation of the UK’s next prime minister in the coming weeks. So with a change in leadership on the horizon, what could this mean for items currently going through parliament such as leasehold reform or other issues affecting the sector.

Mairead: Well, we don’t know who the next prime minister is going to be. The media are saying it’s a done deal and it will be Andy Burnham. Maybe that’s right, maybe it’s not. What we do know is that leasehold reform has got cross party support. If the next prime minister is Andy Burnham, we know that he has been an advocate of housing issues in the past. We don’t know much about his policy right now. We also don’t know who he’s going to have in his cabinet. And I think that’s going to be crucial to the pace of reform because the current minister of state housing and planning is Matthew Pennycook. He had 3 years as a shadow minister before taking the office in 2024. And it’s now 2026 so he’s had 2 years in office. A total of 5 years of experience. That’s really different to the merry-go-round of ministers that we had in that role during the previous parliament. We had 6 housing ministers in that 5 year parliamentary period. So that stability within the ministry has been useful. Matthew Pennycook has given some great speeches on reform, how it’s progressing. And I think what’s been really clear in some of his most recent speeches is that we need the right reform. Not just reform at pace. But the right reform. And he’s prioritising that over an unsustainable timetable. So I think a lot of the change going forward is going to really depend on who stays in that role as minister of state housing. I should say Charlotte that the people who are doing a huge amount of the legwork on this are the civil servants.

Charlotte: Yep.

Mairead: And regardless of who is prime minister or who is minister of state, those civil servants will remain the same. So all of that ground work that they’ve done won’t be lost.

Charlotte: It is very interesting. I guess we’ll only find out won’t we over the next few weeks, months and see what happens.

Mairead: Absolutely. There’s going to be change going on throughout this parliament until 2029. Personally I think some of the timescales are quite ambitious. So I anticipate that at least some of the legislation will be brought forward in the same way that the leasehold and freehold reform act was brought forward, that we have the primary legislation. But we will need secondary legislation to implement it so that could be change is going on well beyond 2029. We already know that the proposals for changes to end leasehold and bring forward commonhold are only going to affect new build properties in the first instance. Because commonhold isn’t new. Commonhold has existed as a concept since 2002. So current building owners could convert to commonhold under the current system. It’s quite a clunky process and one of the things we expect in the new bill is a smoother transition process. But, that’s going to take a really long time. It’s not a case of 10 years from now, leasehold won’t exist and commonhold will be the default tenure. Because it won’t. It’s going to take a really, really long time to convert existing stock from leasehold to commonhold. If indeed that ever happens.

Charlotte: I know we don’t really know what the legislation is going to look like in practice. Is there anything you specifically think the industry needs? Something you want the industry to have that should ultimately be implemented.

Mairead: That’s a great question. All of this change is to make living in communal buildings easier for residents. So if I could of had anything I wanted, it would have been one single piece of legislation to bring together all of the current legislative provisions that affect residential flats because it’s really tricky for non-lawyers to find the relevant legislation. As lawyers we talk about the housing act. But there are multiple housing acts. So sometimes we are talking about the 1985 act and other times we are talking about the 1987 act. And then on top of that, you’ve got various other pieces of legislation that feed into the housing act. And we’ve got the leasehold and freehold reform act in 2024 and then we’re going to get a commonhold and leasehold reform act probably within the next 2 years. But that doesn’t mean that the things that are in the 1985 act or the 1987 act are no longer going to be relevant.

Charlotte: Yeah.

Mairead: They are. It just means that everything is going to be spread over probably 8 to 10 primary pieces of legislation which are accompanied by dozens of pieces of secondary legislation. So if I could of had anything I wanted Charlotte, I would of had all of that consolidated

Charlotte: Yeah.

Mairead: into one single piece of legislation to make it more accessible for everyone.

Charlotte: I mean it makes total sense having it all in one piece of legislation because then it simplifies it for homeowners.

Mairead: Absolutely because all legislation is complicated and it’s not just what’s written in the legislation. We have to look at how that’s interpreted by industry, and ultimately how it’s interpreted by tribunals in courts. But it would certainly help if it were all consolidated in one piece of legislation because that’s a much easier starting point for non-lawyers.

Charlotte: So we’ve obviously spoken about what’s happened this year, your career so far. It would be nice to get to know you a little bit better so we thought we’d put together a few quick fire questions for you Mairead.

Mairead: I did this when I spoke to Martin King. Okay, go ahead.