MHCLG Consultation - CSS Strategic Summary

The consultation represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to influence government thinking and shape policy and legislation around the long-term stewardship of community assets on new housing developments.

Consultation deadline: 12 March 2026 | Audience: Housebuilders, Local Authorities, Industry stakeholders | Reuse permitted

Key Takeaways

  • Once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape stewardship policy
  • Current consultation focuses too narrowly on private MAs
  • Stewardship and placemaking must be treated together
  • Strong existing models (charities, CICs) are under-recognised
  • Planning system plays a critical but underplayed role
Introduction
Enhanced Protections
Reducing Private Estate

Community Stewardship Solutions is currently collating and drafting its response to the MHCLG consultation, due for submission by 12 March 2026, which comprises two parts:

Audience & reuse:

This summary is being published to support and enable colleagues across the housebuilding industry to shape their own responses. CSS is happy for anyone to use part or the whole of this summary in their response.

Why this consultation matters?

The opportunity through the consultation to share experience from across the housebuilding sector covering developments of varying scale, complexity and geography is welcome and necessary. Improving the long-term position for residents and communities subject to estate charges, and where management companies or other stewardship bodies take on ownership and responsibility for community assets, is critical. These issues have been brought into sharp focus by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), particularly in its response to the MHCLG consultation on restricting ground rent for existing leases.

There is broad agreement that the industry must change to provide stronger protections for residents in perpetuity. This includes, in some cases, higher quality assets at the point of delivery, and greater engagement, transparency, accountability and resident influence within stewardship bodies regardless of legal form.

Sector experience & variability

Over the past twenty years, as Local Authorities have largely withdrawn from adopting community assets on new housing developments, the sector has trialled a wide range of stewardship and management solutions. Practice across the country is mixed, with both strong and poor examples evident on large, complex sites as well as smaller developments. There is no single model that works universally. Local context, scale and character must be allowed to shape outcomes if distinctive, sustainable places are to be created.

Strategic opportunity

The consultation represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to influence government thinking and shape policy and legislation around the long-term stewardship of community assets on new housing developments. However, its current framing focuses predominantly on private management companies—typically limited companies—and does not sufficiently recognise the breadth of existing and emerging models that are already delivering successful long-term outcomes.

Stewardship and placemaking are increasingly recognised across the housebuilding sector, including by Local Authorities, as essential to creating successful places that endure. This wider context is largely absent from the consultation. As the Government progresses proposals for New Towns, stewardship and placemaking will be central to ensuring their long-term success. There is no reason why other large-scale developments should not be supported by the same principles.

The consultation also gives insufficient attention to the creation of outstanding places where people want to live, work and spend time. Active community involvement, engagement and ownership of place are essential components of this and must be embedded alongside high-quality stewardship.

There are already strong examples of effective stewardship and placemaking within the sector, from which lessons can be learnt and applied more widely. New legislation should build on the strengths of these models and embed them within the future framework. Equally, there are many failing sites where residents lack meaningful control over costs, transparency or the ability to replace underperforming managing agents (MA’s). For these communities, mechanisms are needed to retrofit best practice, rectify poor arrangements and prevent the continuation of sub-standard governance and management.

Enhanced Protections for Homeowners on Freehold Estates

    • Improvements to transparency and accountability for residents, whether through Residents’ Management Companies (RMCs) or other forms of stewardship body are welcomed in principle. However, greater clarity is needed on how these outcomes will be delivered in practice through governance structures, decision-making processes and resident engagement, and when these requirements would apply over the lifecycle of a development.
    • Successful stewardship depends on multiple, interrelated factors: meaningful resident involvement in governance; clear, regular and appropriate communication; and a variety of engagement mechanisms that reflect the diversity and complexity of communities. No single engagement method will suit all residents, and legislation must recognise the need for flexibility.
    • Charities and Community Interest Companies (CICs) offer particular advantages as stewardship bodies. They operate for public benefit, protect assets through asset lock, and are subject to additional regulatory oversight. Assets cannot be transferred outside the charitable or CIC structure without regulatory approval. In these models, the charity or CIC effectively acts as the estate manager, appointing MA’s or staff to collect estate charges and deliver management functions. These inherent safeguards are not adequately explored in the consultation.
    • Clarity is needed around the definition of the “embedded model”. Where this term refers to arrangements in which MA’s exert undue control, with no effective resident recourse in cases of poor performance or escalating costs, these issues can often be addressed through improved Articles of Association and governance frameworks. Clear requirements for resident influence, including resident representation on boards, can mitigate these risks without excluding certain stewardship models.
    • On large, phased developments, early resident participation in governance can be limited by numbers and capacity. Best practice therefore supports the use of multi-stakeholder boards from the point of organisational establishment, with representation drawn from developers, residents, local stakeholders and professionals. Developers should also be required to engage with residents and stewardship bodies on asset design, layout and quality, with meaningful opportunities for influence prior to handover. Robust planning mechanisms (through Planning Conditions or Section 106 obligations) are essential to managing conflicts of interest and safeguarding standards.
    • Access to information following a change of managing agent remains a significant challenge. Stewardship bodies frequently encounter resistance from outgoing agents when seeking historic financial records, contracts, maintenance regimes and other documentation, despite ongoing obligations to residents. Legislation should require MA’s (past and present) to provide full and timely access to relevant information to stewardship bodies and incoming agents which does not prevent incoming agents from billing residents.
    • Mandatory training for MA’s is welcomed, but its value will depend on how directly it translates into improved practice and compliance with statutory requirements. The content and application of training therefore requires careful consideration.
    • The proposal for a new national advisory body for residents is supported in principle, though clarity is needed on funding arrangements and whether costs would ultimately be passed on to residents.
    • Enhanced transparency around estate management costs and consultation on major projects is important, but the consultation should consider the risk of unintended consequences, including increased managing agent fees. Safeguards are needed to ensure that improved accountability does not result in additional cost burdens for residents.
    • The removal of disproportionate enforcement charges and the draconian remedies available under the Rent Charges Act is strongly supported. However, stewardship bodies must retain proportionate and fair mechanisms to recover unpaid estate charges following due process. Without this, the financial burden falls unfairly on other residents.
    • Finally, it is not clearly explained how residents within charity or CIC-based stewardship arrangements would remove or appoint estate managers, nor is it clear how the estate manager role is defined. In well-governed stewardship bodies, transparent and accountable relationships with residents already provide mechanisms to address underperformance, so further clarity on how proposed reforms would operate in practice is required.

Conclusion

However, there is insufficient detail on how these proposals would operate in practice, including governance arrangements, resident influence, timing of implementation and application across the lifecycle of developments. The complexity of communities and the need for flexible, multi-method approaches to engagement are not fully reflected.

Further clarity is required on early-stage developments, developer obligations, access to information following managing agent changes, the role and appointment of estate managers, funding of the advisory body, and how greater transparency can be achieved without increasing costs for residents. While the removal of draconian enforcement powers is supported, fair mechanisms for recovering unpaid charges must remain.

Reducing the Prevalence of Private Estate Management Arrangements

    • This consultation makes no reference to placemaking (community development), representing a fundamental omission. Community development plays a central role in creating resilient, healthy and engaged communities. Good stewardship alone is insufficient; placemaking must be treated as an integral component. Most MA’s lack the skills or remit to deliver community development, requiring clearer distinction between the roles of MA’s and stewardship bodies.
    • There is disproportionate emphasis on RMCs, despite the existence of alternative organisational models, such as charities, community interest companies (CICs) and parish or town councils that often provide stronger governance, transparency, tax efficiency, resident protection and asset security. These bodies should be equally recognised as adopting organisations and afforded protections and standards comparable to those available to Local Authorities.
    • For most developments beyond a very small scale, stewardship boards should be multi-stakeholder in perpetuity and supported by professional staff and advisors. Large-scale developments typically include a wide range of complex and strategic assets—such as public open space, community buildings, heritage assets, biodiversity net gain land, country parks and sports facilities, many of which serve wider populations beyond those paying estate charges. The effective management of these assets requires specialist expertise and sustainable funding arrangements that cannot reasonably be provided by volunteer resident directors or estate charges alone. MA’s may form part of the delivery solution, but they represent only one component within a broader, professionally resourced stewardship structure, with funding and governance arrangements agreed early in the planning process to ensure long-term viability.
    • Local Authority adoption of most community assets is unlikely to be viable given financial constraints. However, statutory bodies should continue to adopt high-risk, high-cost infrastructure such as roads, sewers and underground SUDS, as well as specialist assets such as district heating networks, which require technical expertise.
    • Where stewardship bodies are required to adopt small roads and cul-de-sacs, these should be constructed to the same adoptable standards as those transferred to Local Authorities, with equivalent inspection regimes and funding arrangements. There should be no distinction in asset quality based on the adopting body.
    • The consultation underplays the role of the planning system. Planning conditions and Section 106 obligations can secure governance structures, funding models, asset and landscape management plans, inspection regimes and robust handover processes. Stewardship bodies, as the ultimate asset owners, should have formal involvement in design, approval and handover, alongside Local Planning Authorities.
    • There is concern that the introduction of common standards may encourage a lowest-common-denominator approach, undermining innovation, placemaking and local distinctiveness. Standards should enable quality and consistency while allowing flexibility.
    • Reliance on commuted sums and estate charges alone is often unsustainable. Commuted sums are time-limited and frequently unpopular with both Local Authorities and developers. Larger developments increasingly use mixed-income funding models that combine estate charges with endowed commercial assets, financial endowments or housing. This can create more resilient stewardship bodies capable of weathering economic and environmental pressures without disproportionate impacts on residents.
    • Financial viability should be established at the outset of development through the planning process, regardless of scale. Stewardship bodies must be able to maintain quality and deliver placemaking over the long term without continual cost escalation.

Conclusion

This consultation omits several fundamental issues critical to the long-term success of new communities. Most notably, it fails to address placemaking and community development, despite their central importance. It also places undue emphasis on RMCs, despite other stewardship models often being more appropriate and effective.

There is insufficient differentiation between small and large-scale developments, particularly regarding strategic assets, environmental obligations, governance complexity and funding requirements. The role of the planning system in securing quality, governance and long-term viability is underdeveloped, and the reliance on estate charges and commuted sums risks placing unsustainable pressure on residents.

A more holistic approach is required, one that recognises placemaking alongside stewardship, supports a range of organisational models, and promotes resilient, mixed-income funding structures capable of delivering high-quality places over the long term.

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This strategic summary is published to support colleagues across the housebuilding and placemaking sector in shaping their own responses to the MHCLG consultation.
CSS is happy for this content to be used, adapted or referenced in full or in part.

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