Tag: Private rented sector

Categories
Blog Post

Building a better private rented sector: A conversation with Edward Benyon

RB: The Labour Government’s Renters’ Rights Act 2025 is one of the biggest changes to England’s private rented sector for generations. How does it change things for you?

Edward: I couldn’t agree more with the abolition of Section 21 – I’ve never used it in all my time at the Benyon Estate and in previous roles – but I don’t think reform has gone far enough on security for tenants.

For me, the legitimate reasons why a landlord might need possession of a property are fairly straightforward: if the tenant is behaving antisocially, if they aren’t paying the rent, if the landlord genuinely wants to move into the property, or if they need to sell it. All of those circumstances still exist under the Renters’ Rights Act. That’s one reason why I don’t think the reforms have gone far enough.

A second reason is that it limits the kinds of tenancies we’re able to offer. People talk about the abolition of Section 21 as though it’s automatically increased tenant security, but I don’t think it’s that simple. Before the Act, if tenants wanted a three-year fixed-term tenancy, we were perfectly happy to offer them because we are a long-term business. Families knew where they were going to live and what rent they were going to pay, so they could plan ahead and have their children settled happily in schools. To me, that’s an important kind of security. We’re no longer able to offer that.

I don’t think the Renters’ Rights Act has changed very much for us in practice, and there’s very little in the Act that worries us. I do have some concerns about how parts of the new system will work. Tenants can challenge rent increases at the First-tier Tribunal, and the increase can be delayed while the case is considered. There are also already long delays in the courts when a landlord has a legitimate reason to regain possession. We’ll have to see how that works out in practice.

What I think is more interesting is where reform goes from here. If you look back before the Housing Act 1988, tenants had a huge amount of security and landlords had very little control. The 1988 reforms swung the pendulum completely the other way. What we should be trying to do now is establish more of a middle ground.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

RB: How can we build long-term security into the private rented sector?

Edward: I think the Government should spend less time thinking about what it wants to ban and more time thinking about what it wants to encourage. Suppose landlords had the option of offering ten-year tenancies, and the Government created the right incentives to encourage that model. That could be transformative for families living in the PRS.

Ten years is long enough for a family to build a life. Children can stay in the same school. Parents have certainty. People know where they’re going to be. That starts to feel like genuine housing security.

I think there could be a bargain here between landlords and government. If you’re prepared to commit a home to the private rented sector for the long term and give a family ten years of security, government could give you something in return.

RB: How could policy encourage a better private rented sector?

Edward: Take VAT. At the moment, if you build a house to sell, the development is zero-rated for VAT. You can recover the VAT you’ve paid during construction. Whereas if you’re building or improving property that will remain in the private rented sector, you can’t reclaim that VAT.

The same applies when we’re repairing or improving our existing homes. Whatever the construction cost is, we effectively have to add another 20 per cent because we can’t recover the VAT. I’ve never understood why the tax system treats investment in homes for sale and investment in homes for rent so differently. When you combine that with licensing costs and everything else landlords now have to absorb, investment becomes significantly more expensive.

Now, I fully accept that what I’m about to suggest costs money, and the Treasury’s instinctive answer to that is usually ‘no’. But suppose the Government wanted to encourage much longer private tenancies. One answer would be to say: “If you’re prepared to commit your property to the private rented sector on a genuinely long-term basis, we’ll allow you to reclaim VAT on repairs.”

That would create a real incentive for landlords who want to invest in secure homes for the long term. Landlords would be taking on some risk, because if you were to sell a property with a tenant in place on a long lease, it would typically be worth perhaps 20 or 25 per cent less than if it were vacant. My proposal wouldn’t completely compensate for that reduction in value, but if you’re genuinely a long-term landlord – if your intention is to keep renting that property for decades rather than selling it – it matters much less.

RB: What’s the balance for you between affordability, security and quality in your stock?

Edward: Our day-to-day challenge is creating contemporary living within period properties. People live differently today than they did twenty years ago, and we’ll need to continue adapting our homes to reflect that. Fundamentally, though, we want to keep the portfolio together and continue managing it for the long term.

Our objective isn’t to advertise a property at the absolute highest rent we think somebody might eventually pay. We advertise at a rent we think is fair and achievable because we want somebody to move in quickly, be happy there and stay for as long as possible.

The thing we as a landlord really want to avoid is voids: empty properties cost money. Long-term tenants are good for us. They’re good for the business. They’re good for the community. They’re good for the property.

I sometimes wonder whether that’s one of the differences between long-term landlords and some smaller buy-to-let investors. A private individual may genuinely need to move back into a property, or decide to sell it, or simply change their plans. That’s perfectly understandable. But businesses like ours – and, I suspect, most institutional landlords – don’t want to do those things. We want long-term, stable occupation.

One thing I would add is that successive governments have introduced legislation aimed at dealing with rogue landlords. There are rogue landlords who deserve to be dealt with robustly, but the overwhelming majority of landlords are decent people trying to provide good homes for good tenants. Measures such as Awaab’s Law are absolutely right and we fully support them. I think we’d get much better outcomes if government worked more closely with landlords who are genuinely trying to invest for the long term.

The private rented sector isn’t going away, so let’s work out how to make it better.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post

The trouble with rent controls

Rent controls are attractive for an obvious reason: when rents are rising rapidly, limiting how much landlords can charge promises immediate relief. However, decades of international experience point to fundamental problems. Attempts to design around these problems create new distortions of their own. Ultimately, while rent controls can change the price some people pay for housing, they fail as a genuine solution because they fail to address why housing is expensive in the first place: scarcity.  

Private rents in England rose by 9% in the year to March 2024, the fastest rate on record. In London, the average private tenant spends around half of their take-home pay renting a one-bed flat. Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that rent control is back on the political agenda. But before policymakers reach for this lever, it is worth looking at how rent control has worked elsewhere in the world.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Rent control policies tend to spring up in places where housing costs become unaffordable for many people. Since World War 1, most countries have tried a version of rent control. Over time, regimes have tended to become more flexible as governments attempt to address some of the unintended consequences of rent control.

When supply shrinks

Analysis of rent control has tended to find that it damages the supply of housing. Partly this happens by discouraging construction, but it falls just as readily through removal of existing stock from the market. However, there is some disagreement about whether this is a fundamental problem of rent control or a problem that can be designed out of the system. Disagreement tends to flow from differing analysis techniques, time periods and metrics, as is the case for research into the supply effects under rent control in Catalonia.

Berlin introduced ‘hard’ rent controls in 2020. Rents were frozen in the city at 2019 levels for five years, with maximum rents set, per metre square, depending on location and amenities. Rents in the city did fall, but so too did the number of housing options.

Rental advertisements halved, from 600 per week before the announcement to 300 per week following the policy’s implementation. The number of properties that were converted from rental to owner-occupied, increased from 12,700 in 2019 to 19,200 in 2020. Overall, the construction of new dwellings declined by 14% in Berlin over the same period, while across the rest of Germany construction increased by 5%.

San Francisco’s rent control policy, introduced in 1979, was ‘softer.’ To mitigate the damage to supply, rent controls only applied to buildings that existed when the controls were introduced and it was possible to reset the rent after tenancy. In 1994, rent control was extended to smaller landlords, meaning that small rentals built before 1980 were now covered by controls, and all after weren’t.

Facing a lower return than the uncontrolled market, landlords converted their units to homeownership or redeveloped buildings to create new units exempt from rent control. As a result, the rental supply in San Francisco dropped dramatically. Overall, landlords reduced the supply of rentals by 15%. Restrictions on redevelopment have tried to stop this but were found merely to result in building deterioration and abandonment as rents failed to keep up with maintenance costs.

Rent control breaks the usual link between income and housing choice, in which people weigh space, location and amenities against what they can pay. This gives incumbent tenants greater security and less pressure to move. For supporters, that’s a good thing as it prevents gentrification. But it also means tenants have every reason to stay put even when their needs change. An empty-nester keeps the three-bed flat; a growing family doubles up in bedrooms rather than lose their discounted rent. Glaeser and Luttmer found that about 21% of New York renters live in apartments that have more or fewer rooms than they’d chose in a city without rent control.

Who benefits?

Rent control policies often end up doing the opposite of what their supporters want. This is because rent controls tend to be introduced where the market is hottest – which usually means the most desirable parts of a city. As in Berlin, richer residents tended to live in these expensive, high-amenity locations. Predictably, Berlin’s rent control benefited richer households over poorer households.  

That’s because rent control is not a needs-based welfare policy. When price no longer decides who gets a home, something else must. In Oslo, landlords would request specific characteristics like gender, age, religious affiliation, or services that tenants would provide themselves, such as renovation and garden work, snow clearing, or baby-sitting. Elsewhere, it’s simply your position in a queue: first-come-first-served.

In the 1970s, Nat Sherman, a tobacconist that produced hand-rolled cigars, gold-tipped cigarettes and $800 custom-made pipes, paid $355 a month for his six-room Central Park West rent-controlled apartment he’d had for nearly four decades. His response, when asked if it was fair, was that as he used the apartment so little the rent was reasonable. He spent about half the year in Florida.

These inequalities become baked in. In New York, controlled apartments are inheritable goods. Family members that have been living in the apartment as their primary residence for at least two years can take over the tenancy. While in Sweden, controlled tenancies are treated as individual assets. Rental contracts are sometimes bundled into property sales to reduce the headline price – effectively treating rent-controlled apartments as currency.

The rent control hydra

Supporters of rent control freely admit that the policy’s history is rife with bad outcomes. But they say that’s because it’s never been designed properly. Exceptions, licencing schemes, additional regulations and price-pegging measures are offered as sensible remedies to past design failures. But we have already seen that these fixes create more problems than they solve. In this way, rent control is a hydra.

None of this makes the people who reach for rent control wrong to be angry. The housing crisis is worsening people’s lives. But the core of the issue is scarcity. Rent control can’t prevent housing being scarce, no matter how many times the design is refined. The only thing we can do to address this fundamental problem is to build more homes where people want to live and invest in the success of other cities and places outside London, so that supply rises and demand is spread more evenly around the country.

Jenevieve Treadwell is a Policy Fellow at the London School of Economics’ School of Public Policy. Follow her work here.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post

Britain Needs Better Homes

Over the past weeks, we have all sought shelter in our homes from abnormally high temperatures. Households will have struggled to keep their home cool, just as they struggled to keep their property warm last winter. Many people were stuck inside properties suffering from damp, mould, poor ventilation, and general disrepair. The extreme heatwave has been a stark reminder that we don’t just have a problem with the number of homes being built, but a significant housing quality crisis too.

For millions of households, their home actively harms the health, wellbeing, and life chances of everyone who lives there. According to the English Housing Survey, 15 per cent of properties fail the Decent Homes Standard. Those who rent privately are twice as likely to occupy a non-decent home (22 per cent), compared to those who live in a home for social rent (10 per cent). This could be due to hazards like fire dangers and trip hazards, poor energy efficiency, or broken roofs and windows.

While every part of the country has non-decent homes, there are significant geographical differences. Nearly one in five properties in the South West and Yorkshire (18 per cent) are non-decent. This is twice as high as the North East (9 per cent), and significantly higher than London (13 per cent). And the problem is often worse in more rural areas, as local authorities like Westmorland and Furness, Cornwall, and North Yorkshire have large proportions of people living in substandard homes.  

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Labour’s record

Since 2024, the Labour Government has acted on poor-quality homes. The Renters Rights’ Act will apply a new Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector, and Awaab’s Law will tackle damp, mould and other hazards in social and private rented homes. The long-term social rent settlement will enable providers to invest in existing stock, while they build thousands of additional high-quality homes.

But the next Prime Minister must go further. While building 1.5m new homes is a necessary ambition, improving existing stock so everyone has access to a safe, secure and accessible home should be a priority too.

This would speak to our history as a party. For more than a century, Labour in government has focused on raising housing standards. The first Labour Government passed the Wheatley Act 1924 that delivered a wave of high-quality council housing, providing an alternative to the slums. The Attlee Government repaired hundreds of thousands of existing homes in six years, while the Wilson Government provided grants to improve housing stock of every tenure. And New Labour’s Decent Homes Programme delivered a sustained programme of public investment that improved around one million social homes. 

It is also something that the public favours. Our survey with YouGov found 66 per cent of English adults supported investment to ‘improve existing properties to meet basic housing standards, even if it means reducing the number of homes that are built each year’. Just 15 per cent favoured building more homes at the cost of neglecting improvements to existing properties.

Building while improving

However, the Government does not have to choose between more homes and improvements in existing stock. There is an enormous opportunity to target public investment in streets, blocks of flats, or entire estates for regeneration that builds decent homes in every community. Indeed, the Northern Housing Consortium has estimated over 500,000 good quality homes in the North alone can be created through housing-led regeneration.  

The Fabian Housing Centre has set out how we can improve homes in every part of the country, with a specific focus on tackling poor-quality rented accommodation.

The Government should invest £470m a year over a decade specifically to replace and regenerate homes across streets, flat blocks, and whole estates. All funded regeneration projects should be required to show no loss of homes, particularly for social rent. Where affordability challenges are highest, these regeneration projects should be required to increase the number of homes through greater density – particularly for social rent. This funding should be devolved to strategic authorities to deliver estate renewal, in partnership with local councils.

This should be accompanied with specific funding for improvements and maintenance in the social housing sector. A new long-term fund to provide investment over ten years, in predictable waves, will enable all social renters to live in a safe, secure, warm and accessible home. And by helping social housing providers with their maintenance and improvement bills, the Government can unlock financial capacity to build new social homes.

The Government has rightly prioritised housebuilding in the first half of this parliament and must continue to do so. But existing homes need investment too. Funding for regeneration and social housing improvement is required. The next Prime Minister must deliver this to tackle the housing shortage and the housing quality crisis together. That can be a legacy for Labour to be proud of.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Designing rent controls for England

Today, 2.4 million households in the UK private rented sector are struggling to pay their rent. With the war in Iran pushing up mortgage rates again, affordability will worsen unless government intervenes.

The Renters’ Rights Act is a major step towards a fairer rental sector, but it does not address the cost of renting. IPPR is calling for a national rent stabilisation scheme as the logical next step.

Other levers to lower costs matter but they are either too expensive or cannot ease the pressure quickly enough. New supply takes years to build and longer still to lower rents. Social housing is vital, but delivery is slow and only reaches a fraction of private renters. Increasing welfare provision for renters would be extortionate – 70 per cent of struggling renters currently claim no support for their housing.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Government has been uneasy about rent controls because their history is littered with cases – New York, Berlin, Massachusetts, Stockholm – where poorly designed systems have had negative consequences. But these examples obscure milder rent controls adopted across Europe, some of which have been in place for decades. France, Spain, Ireland, and Scotland’s revised scheme show that risks can be managed.

We recommend that rents should be ‘double-locked’, linked to wages and the Consumer Price Index (CPI), applied nationally, both within and between tenancies. This must be accompanied by exemptions for new-builds, expansion of support to meet new quality standards, and regulation on short-term lets. 

Not any rent control scheme will do, and our proposal tackles the key concerns that critics point to head-on: reduced supply; property quality; new housebuilding; inequality; and mobility.

Supply

The most common criticism of rent controls is that by limiting landlord profits, they reduce the supply of rental properties. At a time when vacancy rates are already low, a sudden contraction in supply would place even greater pressure on renters. 

This risk can be mitigated through a system that allows rents to rise broadly in line with prices. The aim is not to freeze rents, but to create a more stable and predictable path over time. The double-lock mechanism recognises that indexing to inflation alone leaves renters exposed to inflationary shocks, like Iran. Equally, a system linked only to wages does not allow a gradual closing of the gap between income and rents.

International examples also highlight the importance of preventing landlords from converting their properties. We therefore recommend a licensing scheme, like in Scotland or Wales, and a hard cap on the number of nights a property can be rented out short-term each year, like London.

Even under a mild rent stabilisation scheme some landlords will see lower returns, but recent analysis from JRF shows that most landlords still make substantial profits alongside long-term capital gains. When landlords do sell up, the government must strengthen the wider housing safety net.

Property quality

Controlling rents can remove the incentive for landlords to invest in their properties, but the government’s Decent Homes Standard and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards will still safeguard quality. In fact, rent stabilisation directly addresses the risk of “renovictions” where landlords pass unaffordable renovation costs to tenants. There is not a single international example of energy efficiency standards being implemented without some form of rent control.

The Warm Homes Plan already includes some support for landlords struggling with compliance, but there is potential to expand this provision. Beyond minimum standards, limited exemptions for significant renovations – such as those in place in Paris – can help support high-quality housing stock.

New housebuilding

Only 8 per cent of new homes are built for rent but perception matters: even limited regulation can raise concerns about investor confidence.

Exempting new-build properties for a limited-time can help reduce this risk and doesn’t disadvantage struggling renters, as new-builds tend to serve the higher end of the market. Compared to other markets the UK rental market remains lightly regulated, and countries such as France and Spain demonstrate that strong housebuilding pipelines are possible with robust rent controls in place.

Finally, policymakers shouldn’t stick their heads in the sand about the already faltering housebuilding pipeline. A more active role for government is already needed to deliver housebuilding at the scale required.

Inequality and mobility

Rent controls have been known to create divisions between tenants benefitting from rent controls and those who don’t, which in turn can create disincentives to move. While London faces the most acute pressures, unaffordability is a problem for renters across the country. In the North East – where rental unaffordability is the lowest – 18 per cent of people are still facing high housing costs.

Implementing controls nationally prevents rent increases outside the controlled area as well as protecting from local government volatility. Applying controls for both sitting and new tenants reduces the disincentive to move out of a rent-controlled property.

Rebalancing power in the rental market

The cost of living is the public’s number one concern, and housing is people’s number one expenditure. Rent controls – if designed well – have the potential to directly tackle affordability and should be firmly on the table for any government making a serious offer for renters.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

People Power for Rent Controls and Council Homes 

The Renters’ Rights Act’s passage at the beginning of May 2026 signals the possibility of a shift in how we approach the private rental sector in this country. No longer will landlords be able to evict tenants at whim through Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, alongside a host of other protections for tenants including guaranteed rent renewals, periodic tenancies, and more. These changes are the direct result of tireless organising by tenant unions, housing justice organisations, community groups, trade unions, and NGOs – the product of organised people coming together to create organised power. 

But many of these changes are not radical transformations to the housing crisis, but processes that bring the UK in line with most other similar countries. And while there is cause for celebration of the renter power that went into the Act, the RRA does not allay the cost of living crisis that imperils renters. Renters can now challenge unreasonable rent rises by filing with the rent tribunals – and legally do not have to pay the increases during the process of the tribunal. This is a huge step, and at the LRU, our members have been putting together resources to support all renters to challenge rent rises and push for a fairer housing system, collectively. 

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

However, on paper, the tribunal can only rule against rent rises that exceed market rent for the units in question – which provides meagre protection to working-class tenants and families in gentrifying neighbourhoods where rents are increasing rapidly and out of line with the incomes of longtime residents of the neighbourhood. One need only look at Hackney, Brixton, and Walthamstow to see who sets the market rent – landlords – and witness that this too can function as a form of violent social cleansing. Should tribunals get to determine who stays, based on who can pay at a market rate set largely by developers and speculation? 

Already, we have seen members of the London Renters Union and their neighbours receive massive rent rises at the end of their contracts. Others face evictions under grounds still allowed under the RRA, such as if the landlord decides to sell up. It is our members who are the hardest-working, and the most vulnerable, who are facing the shortest end of the stick. What makes London a global city is its ability to create community for those at all income levels, from diverse backgrounds and cultures – we only lose if the city continues becoming a playground for the rich. 

I witnessed this first-hand from 2019 till the current day. During the pandemic, I lived in Dalston with a group of friends, lucky to be able to pay for a room at a price that would now be unthinkable. The eviction moratorium at that time protected renters further. I had to leave that space for various reasons, and re-entered the housing market in London earlier this year. When house hunting recently, we were lucky to find a room for almost double the price from 2019. This is not a material increase in the quality of housing, or the immoveable whims of the market – this is profit. This experience is shared by tenants across LRU and beyond.

Other countries handle this differently. Across Europe, North America, and even Scotland, governments apply regulations to the amount that landlords can charge in rent across the board – not just to tenants who are able to offer the time, and fee, to challenge their increases. While fears abound about rent regulations decreasing supply or dissuading landlords from making repairs, recently-released research from IPPR, NEF, and JRF debunks this myth. And support for rent controls is massive across England – a recent housing demonstration for rent controls and safe, affordable council housing showed over 5000 people taking to the streets, making it the largest demonstration for housing justice in over a decade, and a massive show of unity in the housing movement. Tenant unions from across the country were joined by NGOs, trade unions, community groups, and everyday neighbours. Over 80 organisations endorsed this march, and continue to support rent controls across the board. A recent statement from Andrea Egan, the General Secretary of UNISON, emphasises that only rent regulations can protect the majority of workers represented by UNISON in their homes – workers without whom, huge swaths of the country and the city of London would cease to function.  Renters across England want, and deserve, real affordable rents now – and rent controls can achieve this. This would alleviate stressors on the majority of renters who spend more than one third of their income on rent, fearing an upcoming rent rise and cutting back on essentials. And the recent rumour concerning Rachel Reeves’ support for a rent freeze shows that there is political will to push a real system of rent controls through. That’s why, at the London Renters Union, and with dozens of tenant organisations and community organisations across the country with Homes for Us and Homes for All, we’re fighting for a visionary system of rent control for all tenants, coupled with a demand for safe, affordable, accessible council homes. We believe that we should all fight for rent control – that it protects migrants, people of colour, trans and queer people, youth, the elderly, the disabled, and all those pushed to the fringes of society. This is a natural extension of our fight for housing justice through the Renters Rights Act; a normal and fairly uncontroversial system of protection in most countries; and a politically feasible – and winning – system here. The cost of living crisis, global wars and genocide, many voters’ loss of faith in Labour, alongside the rise of Reform, show that everyday people need real change. This is the moment for renters to contact their MPs and join a tenant union in their area to fight for the system change we need – starting with rent controls and measures for real affordability, long term.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Renters can fight back against unfair rent hikes – and win

It is becoming increasingly difficult for policymakers to ignore the affordability crisis in the private rented sector. In recent weeks, the media was awash with speculation that the Government was considering an emergency 12‑month rent freeze. While these reports were decisively shot down by the Government, the moment exposed both the severity of the crisis facing renters and the political urgency now attached to rising rents, as the cost‑of‑living squeeze is set to tighten further as a result of the war in Iran.

This speculation coincided with a concrete shift in how rents are regulated in England. Just days later, the Renters’ Rights Act came into force on 1st May. Behind the headline abolition of section 21 ‘no‑fault’ evictions, the Act also quietly reshapes how renters can challenge rent increases in the private rented sector.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

An existing legal process allows renters to challenge unfair rent hikes by applying to the First-tier tribunal for a market rent determination. An independent panel assesses whether the landlord’s proposed rent reflects what the property could reasonably achieve on the open market. If the increase overshoots that benchmark, the tribunal will reduce the rent accordingly.

Before the Act, this process was fraught with risks. Renters challenging a rent increase could be hit with a retaliatory section 21 eviction, face a large backdated bill following a tribunal decision, or end up with the tribunal setting an even higher rent than the landlord had originally proposed. The Act removes these dangers, making the process far less risky for tenants and strengthening the tribunal as a safeguard against unfair rent increases.

At Z2K, we see first‑hand the difference that being able to exercise legal rights can make to someone’s financial security through our frontline advice and representation work. We also know that high housing costs sit at the heart of the UK’s poverty crisis. Our previous research with low-income renters in inner London showed that unaffordable rents are one of the strongest drivers of insecurity in the private rented sector.

That’s why, as the Renters’ Rights Act came into force, we wanted to understand how the rent tribunal system was working in practice before the reforms take effect at scale. The result was our new research report, No More Back Doors: Delivering New Renters’ Rights to Challenge Unfair Rent Increases, launched to coincide with the Act’s implementation.

What we found was striking. When renters challenge rent increases, the system delivers significant financial protection. On average, renters who take their case to the First‑tier Tribunal are £1,140 a year better off than if they had accepted their landlord’s proposed increase. That is a meaningful sum for any household, and a vital safeguard for those already struggling to make ends meet.

Success rates are high, too. Renters win in 71% of cases, suggesting that landlords – often assumed to have a firm grip on market values – are routinely over‑pricing their properties. In a small but significant number of cases (around 5%), the tribunal goes beyond blocking the increase and actually reduces the rent below the original level.

The tribunal also builds housing quality directly into the price renters are expected to pay. Market rent determinations don’t just look at local rents – they also look at the home in question, reducing rents where landlords have let standards slide. This isn’t a marginal feature of the system. Our research shows that property quality was considered in 77% of decisions, underlining how central this safeguard is, and how widespread poor standards are.

But while the system can be effective, it is barely being used at all. Just over 1,000 market rent determinations were made over a two‑year period, despite the private rented sector being home to 4.7 million households in England. The Act is unlikely to decisively change this: evidence from Scotland shows that relying on renters to bring individual cases allows many unreasonable rent increases to slip through unchecked.

Even when used, the tribunal does not always prevent hardship. In the average decision we reviewed, the tribunal granted a rent rise of £144 a month, an increase that many renters simply cannot afford. The system offers little protection against the risk of financial crisis or homelessness.

In the longer term, the Government has committed to creating a more modern and efficient new body to handle rent challenges. Done well, this could fix key tribunal weaknesses – shifting towards proactive enforcement, reducing reliance on renter‑led applications, and strengthening protections against hardship and homelessness. It could also improve on what works now by embedding clearer, more streamlined assessments of property conditions.

These reforms won’t solve the private renting affordability crisis on their own, with private renters still handing over an average 34% of their income in rent. But they are a meaningful step towards tackling the worst excesses of unreasonable rent hikes, and will be vital in ensuring that the abolition of section 21 and the Renters’ Rights Act as a whole are not fatally undermined. Turning these new protections into reality will require all of us to play our part in encouraging renters to make use of their new rights. Renters cannot afford for this opportunity to be missed.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Enforcement will define the Renters’ Rights Act’s success

Since being elected, one of my priorities has been to tackle the insecurity faced by private renters across the country and within the Cities of London and Westminster. In my constituency, thousands rely on the private rented sector, and for too many, the reality has meant unstable tenancies, unpredictable rent increases, and a system that too often leaves tenants with little power over the place they call home.  

Long before I was elected, I met with renters who shared their experiences, families forced to move at short notice, tenants hesitant to challenge unfair treatment, and individuals living with the constant fear that a rent increase could push them out of their community. Those conversations made one thing clear: insecurity in the rental market does not just affect individuals, it shapes the stability and cohesion of entire neighbourhoods.

Sign up to red brick’s free newsletter

Since entering Parliament, I have continued to work closely with residents, using their experiences to shape my work and pressing for reforms that would deliver genuine security. Shortly after being elected, I was happy to join the Committee that scrutinised the Bill going through Parliament. By banning Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions and introducing clearer protections around rent increases and tenant rights, it begins to rebalance a system that has for too long favoured landlords over renters. 

But passing legislation is only the first step. For reforms to have impact, they must be backed by systems that are accessible, fair, and effective in practice. One of the most important of these is the process through which renters can challenge rent increases.

For many tenants, the idea of formally challenging a rent increase has felt out of reach. It can appear complex, uncertain, and, above all, risky. When your home is on the line, few feel able to question a landlord’s decision, even when it seems unreasonable. That imbalance has allowed rent increases to become, in some cases, a tool of pressure. 

The changes introduced alongside the Act recognise this reality. By reducing the risks associated with challenging rent increases, they aim to give renters the confidence to assert their rights without fear of unintended consequences. This is essential if we are serious about ending the culture of insecurity that has defined renting for too long.

However, if barriers, whether financial, procedural, or practical, discourage renters from using these protections, then the system will fall short of its potential. Even modest upfront costs or the fear of retrospective charges can be enough to deter people from coming forward, particularly at a time when household budgets are already under strain.

At its heart, this is about more than dispute resolution. It is about ensuring that rent increases are fair, transparent. If renters are to feel truly secure, they must have confidence not only in the law, but in the mechanisms that enforce it. Of course, these reforms to the process of the tribunal must work side by side with investment in the tribunal process so that there are not delays.

This is more than a technical reform. It is a statement about the kind of housing system we believe in. One where renters are able to act on their rights. Where stability is the norm, not the exception. And where the ability to remain in your home does not depend on your willingness to accept whatever terms are put before you.

The Renters’ Rights Act is a landmark achievement, and one that will make a real difference to people’s lives. Its success will ultimately be measured by how it works in practice, by whether renters feel empowered to use the rights it provides, and whether those rights deliver the security they have long been denied.

For renters across the Cities of London and Westminster, and across the country, this is a moment of real progress.

For more information on what the Renters’ Rights Act means for you, please check out Shelter’s website which offers an explainer on this topic.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Renters’ Rights Act lays the foundations of housing justice for private renters

On 26th October 2022, I received a Section 21 ‘no fault’ eviction notice. That meant my partner and I had two months to find a new flat. Three unsuccessful offers, six weeks, a lot of stress and a 40% increase in our monthly costs later, we managed to move into a new place in the same neighbourhood in time for Christmas. It was a grim, expensive experience.

Frankly though, my partner and I could take it. We had some savings, jobs flexible enough to allow us to go to flat viewings at little notice, and enough income to swallow the bitter pill of rapidly escalating rents.

Most private renters are less able to absorb this shock than we were. Almost half have no savings. The private rented sector (PRS) is now home to 1 in 4 of households with children in England, up from 1 in 10 in 2003/04. By 2040, over 2 million pensioners are projected to be renting from a private landlord. Many private renters can’t drop everything to hunt for a new flat because of work, caring responsibilities and health problems. Those with children in school or nursery have less choice over where they can move without disrupting their families. Many people simply want to stay in the community they know and where they feel at home. The need to stabilise life in the PRS is clear and urgent.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 is the biggest win for renters in a generation. It is a reset after decades in which England built one of the least regulated private rented sectors in Western Europe. As of 1st May 2026, Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions are gone. That will curtail opportunities for rogue landlords to use ‘revenge evictions’, where renters who ask for repairs or complain about poor conditions are simply turfed out. Landlords will need to give a reason before evicting people – for example because they are selling the property or moving into it themselves. In these cases, renters will now get four months rather than two to find a new place to live. Given intense pressures in many local housing markets and a social housing system stretched to breaking point, having to move will continue to be a struggle. But those extra two months will be a lifeline for many. They will give renters more time, more choice, and more power.

Other changes will also help rebalance the scales in renters’ favour. Landlords will only be able to put up rent once a year, cannot demand large upfront payments, and cannot invite or accept bids above the asking rent, to name only a few. The Act is a reset after decades of unusually aggressive deregulation. The Housing Act 1988 made short-term tenancies and ‘no fault’ evictions the norm, helping create one of Western Europe’s least secure private rental markets.

But the single biggest problem for private renters remains: it is really, really expensive. Under new rules coming into force on Friday, renters will have a legal route to challenge rent hikes above market rates. Since the biggest rent increases happen when renters move between tenancies, fewer moves should also provide some protection. But none of this helps with the reality that market rates themselves are already unaffordable for many. Britain still needs far more homes, including social housing. But even a major housebuilding push would take years to ease rental pressures. Millions of renters need relief now – not in a decade or more’s time.

It’s no surprise that think tanks, charities, campaigners and tenants’ unions are now calling for different forms of rent regulation to cool or reduce rents over shorter timescales. These range from caps on how rents can rise within tenancies, to full rent freezes between tenancies, to measures to reduce rents from current highs by linking them to reference rents based on local incomes and housing conditions. Others continue the long-running campaign to increase Local Housing Allowance (housing benefit for the PRS) so that it covers the costs of renting. We need a plan to make life affordable for renters, and I hope that Red Brick can be a space for the left to share different ideas and evidence.

But we shouldn’t let this debate distract from what a huge achievement the Renters’ Rights Act is. It lays the foundations of housing justice for private renters. It will allow us to plan our lives, address problems in our homes without fear of eviction, and is likely to mean fewer moves and fewer rent hikes. That is a good place from which to plan our next steps.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Finally, a new era for private renters is here

For some people, 1st May 2026 will not represent anything out of the ordinary beyond maybe being happy at the early signs of summer and looking forward to the coming bank holidays. But for private renters in England (one in five of the population), it will represent a new era, with the Government’s Renters’ Rights Act promising the biggest shake up to renters’ rights since the 1988 Housing Act.

The new law is a long time in the making. Generation Rent was formed back in 2014 with the aim of campaigning for change to our broken renting system. This led to Theresa May’s government first promising to scrap Section 21 evictions in 2019. Since then we’ve had a pandemic and the Conservative Government’s Renters’ Reform Bill, which fell when Rishi Sunak called a snap election two years ago.

But finally we are here. While not the answer to all our problems, the Renter’s Rights Act is certainly a vital first step in addressing the power imbalance between renters and landlords which has caused so much hardship and misery in recent years.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

The headline change is the scrapping of Section 21 evictions, which allow a landlord to evict a tenant for no reason with just two months’ notice. According to analysis by Shelter, someone approaches a local council as homeless every 21 minutes due to Section 21. Meanwhile, the looming threat of a retaliatory eviction means we renters are terrified of raising disrepair issues or challenging unfair rent increases.

From 1st May, outside of rent arrears and anti-social behaviour, landlords will only be able to evict tenants to sell the home, or move themselves or a family member in. They will need to give the renter four months’ notice in these cases and, to prevent abuse, they will be banned from re-letting the home for 12 months afterwards, meaning renters in England will enjoy better protections against eviction than in Scotland or Wales.

Alongside this, there are a host of other changes that will benefit renters from 1st May. The end of fixed-term tenancies will give us more flexibility, allowing us to vote with our feet if a home is poor quality or a landlord doesn’t fulfil their obligations. Meanwhile the limit on rent in advance to one month will help reduce the huge upfront cost of renting and the end of bidding wars will stop the practice of pitting renters against each other to drive up prices. We will also have the right to request a pet and have more incentives to challenge rent increases.

However, fairer winds for renters are not necessarily guaranteed. For the new law to reach into people’s homes and improve their lives, it must be properly enforced by local councils, while renters need to educate themselves about their new rights.

A recent investigation by The Guardian found that two-thirds of councils in England have not prosecuted a single landlord in the past three years, despite receiving 300,000 complaints from tenants during that time. Meanwhile, half of local authorities responsible for housing didn’t fine a landlord between 2022 and 2024, with fewer than 2% of renter complaints leading to any formal enforcement action.

This has to change. We were pleased that the Government recently announced additional funding for council enforcement of the Renters’ Rights Act, and will be working hard to make sure councils are using their new powers to make sure landlords abide by the new law.

But this legislation is finally a recognition that renting from a private landlord has changed dramatically since 1988. No longer do people just rent for a few years in their early 20s. The increase in house prices and loss of social housing will mean more and more of us could be trapped renting for decades or even a lifetime. Homes are the foundations of our lives and private renters need those strong foundations as badly as anyone else.

When Generation Rent first called for the end of Section 21 over a decade ago, we were laughed out of rooms for being unrealistic. The change we have seen since then is proof that renters have been able to have a real say in the decisions that affect our lives, and that our voices have the power to reshape our world. Now, for the first time in a generation, millions of renters can look to the future with greater security, confidence, and hope.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)

Categories
Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

No family should lose their home on a landlord’s whim

“There’s no light in the kitchen. The family are using a desk lamp in there, and there’s no cooker that works. There’s water running down the walls. We sent blankets home for the kids. But they don’t want to complain – they will be thrown out, and that means temporary accommodation – and you know it will be one of those hotels on the Hagley Road in Birmingham … and how will they get the kids to school?”

I was sat with the safeguarding lead for one of my primary schools, talking about one of their families and their private rented flat. Just another day as teacher in one of the lowest income areas of the country.

This story is a composite – but my inbox and my surgeries are full of them. I have talked to so many families, out of their minds with worry about keeping their kids in school, clutching an unwanted Section 21 or an unreasonable rent rise letter.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

After two decades of campaigning for renters, I became the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the Black Country in 2024. We are proud and we are resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 long years of Tory austerity mean wages are low and poverty is high. Social renting is about a third – but private renting is rising fast, up to nearly a quarter of all households.

Much of the private rented sector in my ends is former council homes sold off over decades, leaving families who might once have expected lifelong security exposed to higher costs and instability. And my towns have few professional renters, no student blocks – but an increasing number of poorly managed Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) rented out by the room, aimed squarely at those with few other choices.

I think of the renters I have met these last two years – struggling with rogue landlords and high rents, nervous every day to raise the gas safety certificate four months overdue, the back door that doesn’t close, the fan heater which eats money cos the landlord won’t fix the central heating.

From 1st May, that changes. No more no fault evictions. No more Section 21 letters dropping like a bombshell on an unsuspecting family. Every renter will now have a rolling tenancy. If they keep up with the rent, they keep their home.

The law now recognises a simple truth that renters have always known: a home is not a favour that can be withdrawn at will. It is the foundation of family life, security and dignity.

For 40 years, Section 21 stacked the cards firmly in favour of the landlord’s right to profit from an asset, over the renter’s right to a stable home. And that power imbalance meant renters constantly worried about whether they’d be able to keep their kids in school and stay in their home. It kept people silent about disrepair, afraid to complain, reluctant to put down roots.

But no more. That is why the end of Section 21 matters so deeply. Renters will now know that no one can throw them out of their home just cos. Landlords will still be able to run their businesses; they will have clear grounds to regain their property when they genuinely need to. But risk – previously wholly borne by renters – will finally be shared.

And a safe, decent home matters too. Applying the Decent Homes Standard to private renting, bringing in Awaab’s Law, and backing councils to enforce the rules will finally tackle the damp, mould, faulty electrics and infestations that I have seen renter after renter forced to endure. A landlord who will not fix a home should not be rewarded.

In Tipton and Wednesbury, what many of my constituents actually need is a social home. But with 21,000 households on the waiting list locally, no matter how much we build (and we are building as much as we can), that won’t be where many families live. So getting the quality of private rents up, making them secure, giving families a home they know they can stay in – that matters. 

So to everyone who rents their home, I say this: this Labour Government has your back. No more no fault evictions. Security for families. Safer homes. Proper action on rogue landlords.

Over the last two years, I have voted for this change over and over – so many times, as the landlord lobby mounted one last stand for their right to control tenants’ lives through the House of Lords.

Take a moment to feel proud. All of us who kept on taking on the landlord lobby, who kept on standing up for renters – all of us who voted in a Labour government – we made this happen. 

Antonia Bance is the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the West Midlands. Before her election she was a senior trade union officer at the TUC. She was previously head of campaigns at Shelter and a board member of both the Nationwide Foundation and Generation Rent.

Sign up to Red Brick’s free newsletter

Would you like to write for Red Brick? Email rose.grayston@gmail.com to pitch your piece (c.600-900 words)