14 October 2024
For over 15 years, I’ve been a determined advocate for leasehold and commonhold reform, and many of you may remember me as a past critic of LEASE. At the end of 2023, I was asked to radically transform the organisation aligned with the last government’s reforms and deliver greater impact for consumers. Under our new government, we are taking forward further transformational change.
This process has already brought significant progress. The entire board and senior management team have changed, with our new joint CEOs starting in January 2024. By March, we welcomed a new board, and in September, a new COO joined us. We are appointing a new digital lead, and more changes are planned to continue strengthening LEASE’s support for leasehold consumers. Our expert legal team, which plays a vital role, is growing, with an expanded senior management team now taking on enhanced roles.
Our new board is:
- Wendy Wilson, former House of Commons Library housing advisor who provided crucial advice to MPs for many years.
- Paula Higgins, CEO of the Homeowners Alliance, an advocate for consumers and a member of the Shared Ownership Council.
- Kim Caddy, head of our audit and risk function with a strong background in public housing.
- Emer McNally, digital transformation expert and Group CIO at Mobico Group (National Express), and a former leaseholder.
Like any company board some of our work focuses on the running of the organisation. This includes the audit and risk functions, and the staff pay and remuneration. The board’s overall focus is on change. The new board’s key focus is providing strategic direction to enable LEASE to provide a better service for consumers. The entire board meets with the CEOs and COO as the change committee once a month to plan the group’s transformation.
The biggest change planned for LEASE is a digital transformation project. This will allow customers access better online information. This then allows the LEASE lawyers more time to work on complex cases and support vulnerable consumers. It also allows them to spend time helping with another of our new roles. We now help provide our expert knowledge to the government on ways to improve the law.
The organisation is also starting to work at a strategic level. The first of these projects has been working with the cladding groups umbrella organisation EOCS (End of Cladding Scandal). This work has seen the launch of our buildings insurance survey to help better understand the increases in costs in recent years. We have started updating of advice on building safety issues. We now regularly engage with HSE, the Home Office, MHCLG and the Welsh Government on building safety issues.
For the first time the LEASE advisors are now able to recommend other organisations that consumers might use for help. As many of you know having to use the law should be the last rather than the first choice.
Some may be surprised why LEASE did not have these roles before.
I pay tribute to the staff who have all taken such a positive approach to this radical journey.
