Well who would have thought this time last week that we would know when the election was? A sudden move by Mr Sunak throws parliament into a final splurge of business and in the ‘wash up’ that we have all learnt a lot more about in the last 24/48 hours we have the birth of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024. No longer a bill.. so it really is ‘welcome to the new world of leasehold reform.’

So the next question has to be ‘when does all this come into force?’ – Well the Act’s commencement provisions state that the provisions relating to rentcharges, the costs shifting in tribunal cases on service charge and the BSA amendments come into force two months after the Act is passed into law. So these provisions would seem to be in force as of 24th July 2024. As to the other ‘meatier’ parts of the Act, these are subject to commencement under statutory instruments (‘SI’) – See section 123(3). These SIs need to be made by the Secretary of State and we also know that in order to be effective the valuation changes will need various matters such as the relevant rates to be prescribed. These will need to be in place before the valuation changes can be enacted.

The Bill had only got to the report stage form the Select Committee in the Lords and we will need to pore over the finer detail of the version that has been enacted. However all in all, perhaps not that bad for a Friday afternoon’s work before the bank holiday weekend?

Let’s hope that this model does not suffer from any production line issues that have been known to plague other products made at a similar time.. we await the detail of commencement with interest. 

Mark Chick

24th May 2024