Independent Regulator for Managing Agents Announced

Residential leasehold management is not a regulated profession in England. No licence to hold, no register to join. The one thing an agent must already do is belong to an approved redress scheme. So the standard a leaseholder gets depends on two things: the agent the board appoints, and what the lease says. That is the gap this announcement aims at.

The government put out its own press release, Government goes further to protect leaseholders, on the day. The speech was reported from the conference floor. The wording quoted below is the press release’s own.

What Was Announced

The government will “introduce independent regulation of property agents”, to give “leaseholders, tenants and homebuyers a route towards better rights and protections”. Rayner pointed to agents who are not qualified, licensed or regulated. Good firms, she said, are being undercut by rogue ones.

Three things are named directly:

• A licence to practise. Property agents will be required to hold a licence to do the job, as well as appropriate qualifications to operate.
• Codes of practice. A regulator “can set codes of practice, such as standards of conduct and proper complaint handling”.
• Enforcement with teeth. Where an agent fails to meet the standards, the regulator would be able to withdraw its licence.

Which Fees Will Be Capped

The government will also take powers to cap permission fees and admin fees. These are the charges a leaseholder pays for a consent or a document. Permission to keep a pet. Permission to alter a flat. A pack of papers for a sale.

The amounts are not set. A consultation will decide what is capped, and the figure for each item. So the number that matters to your building does not exist yet.

What These Fees Look Like in Practice

Our own charges are published, so here is the scale in question. On our price list (PDF), in force since 23 June 2025, consent to keep a pet is £180. Consent to alter a flat is £240. An LPE1 pack for a sale is £414. A cap below those figures changes what an agent can recover. A cap above them changes nothing.

What Changes, and What Already Applies

The model is not new. A working group led by Lord Best proposed the same thing in 2019: licences, qualifications and one code of practice. It sat on the shelf until now.

Two Things the Announcement Does Not Say

It does not say who pays for licensing and training. That cost could land on the service charge, or it could not. It also does not set out where the regulator will apply. The press release speaks to England and Wales, and housing is devolved, so watch the consultation for scope. We will not guess at either.

Nothing Has Changed Yet

This is a statement of intent. No start date has been set. The regulator, the licensing scheme, the qualification requirement and the fee caps all need primary legislation, and each will be consulted on.

Until then the existing framework applies unchanged:

• Service charges must be reasonably incurred, under section 19 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
• Major works and long-term agreements need section 20 consultation before the cost can be recovered in full.
• Service charge money is held on trust under section 42 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.
• Permission and administration fees must be reasonable under Schedule 11 to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002.
• Every managing agent must already belong to an approved redress scheme.

There is also no list yet of which qualifications will count, or how today's staff will be treated. Firms that already train and certify their managers start from a better place. But nobody can claim to meet rules that are not yet written.

What It Means for Leaseholders and RMC Directors

If you sit on the board of a resident management company or an RTM company, you appoint the agent. Until the regulator exists, you are the regulator. Three questions are worth asking now. The answers will not change when the law does, and they sit alongside our guide to what to ask a managing agent:

• What qualifications do the people managing our building actually hold, and who audits the systems they work to?
• Where is our money held, in whose name, and who checks it?
• If we complain and get nowhere, who do we go to, and is that route independent of the agent?

An agent who can answer those in writing today is an agent whose position under a licensing regime is straightforward. An agent who cannot is the reason the regulator is being created.

Where Plymouth Block Management Already Stands

We already work to standards somebody else audits, because the alternative is asking clients to take our word for it.

• ISO 9001:2015 certification for our quality management system, certificate FS 685565, audited by BSI.
• Membership of The Property Ombudsman, which gives leaseholders an independent route of redress once our own complaints procedure is exhausted.
• Health and safety risk assessments carried out in-house by IOSH-certified property managers, trained to NEBOSH standard at senior level, rather than passed to a third party.
• Client money held in designated client accounts, one per property rather than pooled, with the interest belonging to the client.
• A management fee agreed in advance, and no commission on contractor invoices. Our advice on whether a job is needed is not paid for by the job.
• Recognition from the sector’s own awards: ARMA ACE Awards 2017 Smaller Managing Agent of the Year, and 2019 Medium Managing Agent of the Year.
• ARMA ACE Awards 2022, Managing Agent of the Year in the 1,000 to 5,000 unit category.

None of that is a substitute for statutory regulation, and we are not presenting it as one. It is the evidence a board can look at while the regulator is being built.

We are telling the boards we act for to do nothing differently this week. The duties in your lease and in the 1985 and 1987 Acts are the same today as they were on Friday. What changes is that the question every board already asks us (how do we know the agent is any good?) will eventually have a statutory answer.

The Likely Sequence

This is our expectation, not a government timetable. The fee-cap consultation should come first. A bill for the regulator and the licence would follow, when Parliament has time. The detail on qualifications and the code of practice usually comes after the Act, not before it.

We will keep this page updated as the consultation and the bill appear. If you are a director or a leaseholder, and you want to know how your building sits against all this, we are happy to go through it with you. The announcement itself is on GOV.UK.

Questions We Are Being Asked

The questions that have come in since the announcement, with what can and cannot be answered yet.

Sources

Everything above is taken from these, not from a summary of them:

1. Government goes further to protect leaseholders GOV.UK
2. Housing secretary to cap fees for leaseholders and regulate agents (subscription) Inside Housing
3. Regulation of Property Agents: working group report (2019) GOV.UK
4. Angela Rayner pledges to end 'injustice' of leasehold properties ITV News
5. Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 19 legislation.gov.uk
6. Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 20 legislation.gov.uk
7. Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, section 42 legislation.gov.uk
8. Redress Schemes for Lettings Agency Work and Property Management Work (Requirement to Belong to a Scheme etc.) (England) Order 2014 legislation.gov.uk
9. Additional Services Price List (PBM Form #01-27 rev. 6, effective 23 June 2025) Plymouth Block Management
10. Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, Schedule 11 legislation.gov.uk

Spotted something wrong, or something that has moved on? Email move@plymouthblockmanagement.com. We correct the page and say what changed.