The Labour Party will not introduce rent controls if it wins the election.
A spokesperson for the party is quoted on today’s Guardian newspaper as saying: “While we do believe action needs to be taken to protect renters and rebalance power, rent controls are not Labour party policy as we remain mindful of the risk they could pose to the availability of rental properties and the harmful impacts any reduction in supply would have on renters.”
The unequivocal statement comes in response to a left wing report being launched tomorrow at an event that appears to be boycotted by shadow ministers.
The report comes from the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council Stephen Cowan. It was commissioned by Labour MP Lisa Nandy when she was shadow housing secretary.
However the official party spokesperson seems to have indicated to The Guardian that the report is not any part of formal policy for Labour if it goes into government.
The leaked proposals publicised in the paper include a system to cap rents at either consumer price inflation or local wage growth – whichever is lower – across England and Wales.
The paper says this will be rejected by the current shadow housing secretary, Angela Rayner, because the party is “conscious of warnings from experts that rent controls could discourage developers from building new houses and therefore make the crisis worse.”
Cowan also recommends that rents can only be increased once a year, with tenants receiving at least four months’ notice of any increase.
He also believes rent review clauses – which give landlords the scope to raise rents mid-contract – should be banned.
However versions of these measures are already in the government’s Renters Reform Bill albeit with two, not four, months’ notice before a rent rise.
The report in the paper today continues: “The Guardian understands that the report, led by Cowan, … will be launched on Wednesday without any shadow cabinet minister attending the event.”
Cowan himself says: “Renters have a right to know that their home will be safe and of good standard. And good landlords have a right to compete in a market where everyone plays by the same rules. These recommendations will enable those things to happen efficiently and quickly.”
Other recommendations include:
– An annually updated National Landlords Register which would require landlords to demonstrate compliance with the decent homes standard or face fines and even be subject to a criminal offence;
– Scrapping Section 21 eviction powers;
– Measures to discourage landlords from entering the short-term and holiday let market or nightly paid temporary accommodation sector by equalising the tax treatment for all forms of private letting; and
– Policies to ensure that medium-term affordable housing returns to being the second-largest part of the housing sector, to decrease the country’s reliance on the private rental market.
Activist groups demanding rent controls are expected to be at tomorrow’s launch of the report and one prominent figure – Tom Darling, of the Renters’ Reform Coalition – says: “These appear to be a commonsense set of proposals for reforming the private rented sector.
“It will be critical that, if Labour is to win the general election, it gets on and delivers a package of reforms along these lines – and fast.
“That will deliver security of tenure for renters who, facing an acute and ever-growing renting crisis, have been so badly let down by the government.”
