Programme Enhance - Member Firm Consultation (April 24)

The Property Institute recognises the importance of continuing to set relevant and appropriate standards for its Member Firms so that those firms can continue to demonstrate compliance with all relevant legislation and standards.

With this in mind, a number of interrelated changes have been identified that seek to ensure The Property Institute’s Member Firms remains robust and relevant in the second half of the current decade. Also,to ensure The Property Institute continues to raise and uphold standards in an appropriate and proportionate way.

Overview of the Consultation

Launched in April 2024, the details of the Member  Firm consultation are summarised below.  All Member Firms are advised to read the full Member Firm consultation paper available here to view.

Known as ‘Programme Enhance’ (initially referred to as Programme 25), the changes are driven by a number of factors, including but not limited to:

• The advent of the new Building Safety Regime with property managers increasingly taking on safety responsibilities additional to their more traditional role of providing services such as the maintenance of common parts and managing the finances of residential blocks; and
• Growing consensus amongst the residential property management industry about the need for the regulation of residential property managers as recommended by Lord Best’s report in 2019; and
• Growing media/parliamentary discussion about how such regulation might best be introduced, for example starting with mandatory qualifications and a mandatory code of practice.

These interrelated changes represent a wide ranging and thoughtful change programme, designed to ensure the Member Firm audit, annual renewal and associated standards remain fit for purpose. They also include a proposal for a new Building Safety Self Evaluation Scheme.

Have Your Say

During April 2024, The Property Institute invited comments from each Member Firm or Associate Firm on the proposed changes for Programme Enhance. Comments received from each Member Firm or Associate Firm were used to help inform how those changes were finalised, with a view to them being introduced with effect from 1 January 2025. 

The Property Institute invited one response per Member Firm (with responses submitted via the online survey which is now closed).

The  survey included a declaration that the response is being submitted by a named individual with delegated authority to do so on behalf of a particular firm.

Whilst responses to the consultation via the online survey were preferred, there was also an option to submit a response offline and complete a Word document available for download. Manual responses submitted were sent to: [email protected] or posted to: The Property Institute, 3rd Floor, 2-4 St George's Road, London, SW19 4DP.

The deadline for the submission of all responses, whether via online survey or manual form, closed at 23:59 on Monday, 3 June 2024. Responses received after that time were not considered unless the respondent had prior written agreement from The Property Institute to submit a belated response.