Parliament finally passed the Renters’ Rights Act last month, though most of its measures will not come into effect till spring 2026.
Even then it does not contain two vital points that could begin to swing the pendulum back in favour of tenants: rent controls and the right to withhold rent.
Campaigning groups, like Defend Council Housing, London Renters Union and Greater Manchester Tenants Union, along-side many official Tenants and Residents Associations (TRAs), are pushing for these two legal rights, as well as for immediate measures, such as a five-year rent freeze, a points-based rent cap, and a national database of landlords. The Act goes nowhere near to protecting tenants or punishing slumlords.
Labour’s record
Sixteen months in, Labour is having a difficult time convincing Britain’s 11 million private renters that they are on their side. There have been a series of embarrassing housing scandals involving ministers.
First Homelessness Minister Rushanara Ali resigned after it was revealed she evicted her tenants, only to raise the rent and put the house up to let again. Then Housing Minister Angela Rayner was caught evading Stamp Duty on her second home. Finally Chancellor Rachel Reeves was found to not to have licensed her property before letting it.
What these incidents reveal is that it is a wild west out there for rogue landlords and middle class property ’investors’, while the rest of us have to deal with soaring rents, black mold and flammable cladding, and seven-year long wait-ing lists for social housing.
But there is some positive news. The Renters Rights Act will offer some much needed protections, like ending ‘no fault’ Section 21 evictions, outlawing discriminatory practices like ‘No Kids’ and ‘No Benefit Claimants’ clauses, and a one-month limit on demands for rent in advance.
Also on the plus side, this month’s housing starts figures are expected to reveal that 230,000 new homes were built in Labour’s first year, within distance of the 300,000 a year they promised over the course of the government.
Yet all the talk of affordable housing is seriously limited by Labour allowing developers and house builders to ‘flip’ newly built ‘affordable housing’ and sell it to private buyers, who can then let them out at non-affordable rents! With 1.3m on housing waiting lists few of these will ever reach the working class.
What needs to be done
But compared to the scale of the problem, these tiny steps are completely inadequate. For Genera-tion Rent, housing costs gobble up 40-50% of their wages. Pay rises are simply taken by the landlord, even if they do not have an outstanding mortgage, just because they know they can.
There are also secondary, often hidden consequences to the housing crisis. The failure of landlords, including councils to address urgent needs for repair and ren-ovations. Infestations and mold lead to respiratory diseases, especially in children, and more time off work for the parents.
Domestic violence victims can be trapped in abusive relationships because there is nowhere they can go and live. Many families are forced by the benefits regime to move hundreds of miles away from their support net-works if made homeless by greedy landlords.
Migrant tenants face the double threat of landlords and racism if they are perceived, entirely with-out evidence, to have received preferential treatment. With Reform on the rise, this is a growing area of work for the tenants’ unions.
The good news is that renters are fighting back. The London Renters Union has opened up a Workers Solidarity unit, which hopes to coordinate their activities with union branches, especially among precarious workers and strikers.
As Millie from the LRU told a meeting recently, ‘Housing and work are the two biggest issues in most people’s lives, so it makes sense to link them together.’
Workers Power urges all union activists to take up this issue in their branches and demand:
• Rent freeze, rent cap, rent controls now!
• For the right to go on rent strike!
• No evictions, block the bailiffs!
