Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has set out plans to introduce a new Tenants’ Rights Charter to increase protection for tenants in private rented housing if he is elected as the UK’s Prime Minister at the next general election.
The charter would include a guarantee of three year contracts and protections against “unreasonable” rent hikes and unsafe living conditions.
The housing plan is the latest in a string of policy announcements made by Corbyn as he attempts to beat off a challenge to his Labour leadership from Owen Smith.
Corbyn has previously proposed extending right to buy to tenants in privately owned housing, due to growing concern that the housing market has become unaffordable for young people.
Among his other new housing policies, Corbyn has promised that a future Labour government would build one million new homes before the end of its first Parliament at a cost of around £10bn, ensuring that around half of the homes built are council properties.
Corbyn said: “Successive governments have failed to fix our broken housing market. Decent housing is a basic human need affecting everything we do and is a significant factor on stress and mental health.
“Our homes are where we should feel safe, yet for too many people housing is a source of anxiety – not security. “And to a whole generation of our young people, the security of home ownership is rapidly becoming an impossible dream.
“That is why the next Labour government will reverse a generation of underinvestment in housing, particularly council housing, and give the chance of a decent, secure, affordable home back to every family and citizen.”
Want to comment on this story? Our focus is on providing a platform for you to share your insights and views and we welcome contributions.
If any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.
Please help us by reporting comments you consider to be unduly offensive so we can review and take action if necessary. Thank you.
.jpg)
%20(002).png)
.png)
Join the conversation
Jump to latest comment and add your reply
I would love to see the detail on how the right to buy private houses would actually operate in the real world. No doubt it would be a great work creation scheme for human rights lawyers throughout the land.
As far as the rest of the comments go, I am positively in favour of the chance of a decent, secure, affordable home for every family and citizen. Just like I am in favour of free air for all and the right wear shoes.
Maybe there is more to his announcements than is being reported by the right wing media jackals and lackeys of the imperialist ruling elite. Otherwise it is just more meaningless sound bites. Or am I too cynical?
Its all Blah Blah and wind, they are not there and when they do they forget what they said, as with ALL governments. Just a further area to get votes.
We all have to do the best with the suits we have in place, lets be honest none of the have a real clue or things WOULD actually change and it wouldn't take so long to change. Stick them on estate for 6 months then watch the make some changes....sharpish.
What about protection for landlords. Make it a offence not to pay your rent, make it an offence to leave the property in disrepair or damaged or masses of rubbish. Stope areas from getting run down. The government created these poorer areas.
The government allows tenants to take and spend rent money then punishes the next landlord by allowing the tenant to pay back £10 per week. The councils are not interested in what happened on the streets, people are suffering and tarred with the same brush, both landlords and tenants. The whole system needs a overhaul. a new MP for just Private sector housing and someone who's been doing the role and knows whats really going on out there. I want boots not suits.
Who cares what Jeremy Corbyn says?
He's never going to be PM.
I have worked in communist countries - as opposed to taking a nice holiday package with the best of everything those countries had.
The only thing JC is going to achieve is a universal slum for all - just like the old communist countries. Private owners will bail out out fast if there is going to be a labour government compulsorily buying houses. The houses that are left in private ownership will be run as slums. Oh, did I mention that I have seen this in action in Bulgaria? The idea is that the state will not purchase such houses. From what I was told it worked too.
So JC will force house owners to maintain their properties will he? In a proper communist country a new boiler would be virtually unavailable with a purchase lead time of many years. The council serve an enforcement notice but that has to be put on hold until you get the boiler. It never comes.
You want to evict a tenant? Tell them the boiler is condemned and they must get out. Out they go and then the boiler becomes magically fixed by a local handyman who can do such things. Handymen in communist countries are highly prized and are usually highly trained engineers who work outside the "system".
That's enough, you are probably not believing me. You should. I am a trained instrument engineer and electrician. I see buildings for what they are and what they cost and I see tenants the same way. I am just a practical person and do have a political axe to swing and look after tenants well.
Please login to comment