A prominent Green Party politician in London has slammed the city’s mayor for not introducing rent controls.

Zoë Garbett, a member of the London Assembly, claims 69% of Londoners support rent controls. She accuses Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan of supporting controls at election time, but failing to introduce them and blaming this on the Labour government. 

Now Garbett has issued a statement saying: “It’s time to start being frank – we are in a cost of rent crisis. On average Londoners spend 40% of their wages on rent and that is absolutely extortionate. We need to break this cycle of unaffordability, and get a grip of the private rental market before even more Londoners can no longer afford to live in their own city.”

She adds: “The evidence is clear: while there’s no guarantee more private housebuilding will limit or drive down the price of renting, there is a guarantee a rent control will. London’s two million renters cannot afford to wait on their Mayor any longer.”

Garbett makes seven recommendations to Khan:

• The Mayor should immediately convene his own renter-led Commission designed to centre Londoners’ diverse experience of renting, and provide resource to the Commission to fund research and economic modelling in relevant areas;

• The Mayor should work with other Metro and Regional Mayors to lobby Government for devolved powers to set caps on rent prices in the private rented sector (PRS), pushing for a cross-regional approach to rent controls;

• The Mayor should update the 2019 Blueprint for Private Renters, taking into the account the changing legislative landscape nationally, and national and international evidence from the past five years, including this forum;

• The Mayor should set out plans to monitor the impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill on affordability, including lobbying Government to make sure actual rents are captured in the new Private Rented Sector Database and otherwise explore how he can improve data collection across London;

• The Mayor should set out in detail how he will deliver on his manifesto promises to back renters to defend their rights, hold landlords to account, and provide funding to renters’ unions, and how he plans to improve landlord licensing across London with new devolved powers;

• The Mayor should borrow from international best practice to develop a framework for analysing impacts of different housing and planning policies on displacement and gentrification;

• The Mayor should ramp-up his acquisitions programme, and improve monitoring of this programme to get an accurate assessment of its benefits and value for money.