Party conference season is over – what did the property industry learn?

A week or so on from party conference season, there is much for the property sector to mull on before a packed legislative agenda to end the year.

Starting with the good news, the party of government remains absolutely committed to large-scale housebuilding. Watching on at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the property professionals I bumped into were all keeping a close eye to see if there was any shift away from Sir Keir Starmer’s recent premiership, which put housing front and centre of the government’s growth agenda.

While housing has now been replaced by devolution as the key buzzword for generating growth, friends and colleagues all left Liverpool in no doubt that housing has not slipped down the agenda, and in fact, will play a key role in devolution’s success.

In a devolved world, the mayors will be the drivers of housing delivery. The key difference we are already experiencing from Burnham’s government is who does the building, with an immediate step-change in the form of affordable housing funding (through the SAHP) being designated for council housing, especially in London.

As is usually the case at party conferences, the party faithful were more uplifted than the commercial pass delegates. The elephant in the room across all the conferences was the increasingly difficult state of flat ownership and the financial viability of developing new homes for sale. House prices, the nation’s favourite topic, show that flats have not kept up with every other form of home since Covid, but apartments make up a significant element in all housebuilding targets.

This is something my organisation, which represents more than 380 managing agent firms responsible for around two million homes across the UK, has been working hard to highlight this year, particularly through our national and London-specific service charge Indices.

At the conferences I attended, politicians and delegates alike were astounded when I told them that service charges in London hadn’t actually kept up with inflation in the past 12 months. Service charges are often poorly understood, and debates around housing costs need to be based on evidence rather than assumptions.  We therefore hope the Index will produce a heightened level of awareness and transparency for policymakers as well as potential homebuyers when considering buying a flat.

In the meantime, we will await with keenness the details of the Your First Home scheme and how it varies from Help to Buy, if at all. Housing was also prominent at the Tory Party conference, with a laser-like focus on home ownership. Another statistic that surprised delegates: more than one in five Brits live in flats and around one in seven households own a flat.

I think everyone hopes there isn’t an election around the corner just yet, but as we move closer to 2029 it will be interesting to see how policy towards homeowners evolves within the Conservative Party and where flat occupiers, leaseholders and that entire sector fits into their vision of a lower-case ‘c’ conservative Britain.

Property management regulation

In one very specific area of policy, The Property Institute came away from party conferences delighted: Labour committed itself to introduce independent regulation of property agents, including licensing, qualifications and, crucially, a regulator with enforcement powers.

TPI has supported this move for many years and the government’s commitment is a significant victory for leaseholders, homeowners and renters. It is also worth noting that the announcement was one of the strongest examples of where conference season produced a tangible policy commitment.

Ours is an industry that has wanted to be regulated for some time. So we were pleased to see Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, recognise that this is a sector that overwhelmingly contains many decent and honest professionals who are undermined and undercut by a minority of poor operators. Regulation will help provide residents with greater confidence that the people managing their buildings are working to recognised professional standards. Measures brought forward must efficiently and proportionately protect flat owners while keeping costs on service charges to a minimum.

However, announcing reform is one thing, implementing it successfully is another. The regulator needs to be statutory and demonstrably independent, utilising designated professional bodies to speed up implementation, access deep levels of performance and monitoring data and, crucially, reduce costs that pass through businesses to the ultimate bill payer, the leaseholders and customers.

Commonhold versus leasehold

Another key legislative announcement from Liverpool is the forthcoming Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, which the prime minister confirmed would be introduced before Christmas, which again demonstrated housing’s place at the heart of the government’s agenda.

There is now broad political consensus that the leasehold system needs reform. But commonhold will only succeed if professional bodies, leaseholders and cross-party MPs and peers work together and form a system that will support residents over the long-term.

Building safety

Now that conference season is over, Parliament is back to business. The introduction of the Remediation Bill is an important milestone in addressing the cladding crisis. But while the bill places new legal duties on building owners and responsible entities, developers signed up to the Developer Remediation Contract are exempt.

Residents will rightly question why those responsible for the construction of affected buildings are not subject to the same legal obligations, timelines and consequences as others. The bill is also too focused on exterior issues and not enough on providing a clear, funded route to identify and remediate historic internal fire safety defects, including compromised compartmentation and non-compliant fire doors.

A wider point is that far too many residents are still living with the consequences of historic failures and the government must ensure that momentum towards remedying these is maintained and not allowed to slow down.

So, there is now an opportunity for government to use the renewed confidence, and poll numbers, that Burnham’s first conference as leader unquestionably secured, to seize the moment to improve consumer confidence in the ownership of flats and apartments, to strengthen building safety, raise professional standards and create a housing system that works better for residents.