Caitlin Barr gives a hopeful thumbs up but asks why no cap on rent hikes
The long awaited Renter’s Rights Bill is finally making its way through Parliament, after the latest figures from the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) revealed an 8.4% price hike (9.6% in London) in private rents in the last 12 months. In March, just a couple of months before the announcement of the general election that would return Labour to power, rents had risen by 9.2% – a record high.
Starmer’s Labour entered office, therefore, with a clear need and wide-open opportunity to improve the prospects of renters. As newly elected Labour MP Chris Curtis pointed out in a recent Guardian article, over a quarter of Tory MPs in the last parliament were landlords themselves. Many of them have now been replaced by younger Labour MPs with experience of just how brutal renting in the UK can be. Could it finally be time for the tides to turn, and for renters to get some much-needed relief?
Much has been said about the new government’s ability to appeal to young voters, and rent reform is a surefire way to get our attention – 74% of 16–24-year-olds rent privately, and a further 16% socially. Nine out of ten of us, in other words, would very much appreciate safeguards to ban no fault evictions, halt rising rents, and take power away from slum landlords.
The Renter’s Rights Bill, with a Section 21 ban at its core, has been introduced to Parliament after the Conservatives tabled a Renter’s Reform Bill earlier this year, which was blocked by backbenchers. Housing charity Shelter have described the new Bill as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to mend the broken renting market – but will it do enough to protect young renters from exploitation?
Section 21 is the leading cause of homelessness in the UK, and the fact that the Bill promises to ban it is a huge victory for renters. If the Bill passes, landlords won’t be able to evict tenants without providing a reason, upending their lives and forcing them to enter the rat race of trying to find a new property in an increasingly hostile market. Acclaimed Irish and Marxist author Sally Rooney wrote of the “psychological hardship” of renting: “Your home – your place in the world, your refuge, the stage for all the private dreams of your intimate life – can be taken from you at any time, through no fault of your own, for the financial benefit of someone wealthier than you are.” In the five years since the 2019 Tory government promised to ban no fault evictions, 109,538 Section 21 claims were brought to the courts by landlords – we’re long overdue a ban, and the Bill will deliver on it.
The Bill also promises to ban bidding wars, another huge entrencher of inequality in the renting market. Many young people already struggle to scrape together deposits and rent, so we’re priced out of properties as other desperate renters throw more money at landlords who know they can get away with it.
However, many campaigners and charities have highlighted ways in which the Bill falls short in its protection of renters. To start with, nothing is to be done about affordability – rent hikes won’t be capped at the level of inflation, meaning that landlords are still free to raise prices and force tenants out of their homes. The manifesto pledged to “empower [renters] to challenge unreasonable rent increases”, but if the law remains unchanged in this area, it’s unclear exactly how effectively tenants will be able to fight hikes. As housing lawyer Nick Bano highlights in his revealing book ‘Against Landlords’, the poorest 20% of renters already surrender over half of their incomes to their landlords, and in 2022 there was not a single region of the UK in which a single woman on a median salary could afford the average rent. Rents are already high enough – we need protection against being priced out even further.
Tenants’ union ACORN have also pointed out that the Bill offers no protection against upfront payments, in which landlords demand months of rent in advance. According to their October 2024 survey, 51.3% of people who have moved to a new private rented home in the last three years have been asked to pay over one month’s rent upfront, 23% over six months, and a shocking 7.6% over a year’s worth. These statistics are even worse for benefit recipients. Without safeguards against upfront payments, a ban on bidding wars is rendered essentially useless.
The Renters Rights Bill will introduce sweeping and crucial changes if it is passed, that will have a huge positive impact on the lives of renters, but it ultimately falls short in its aim to protect them from greedy landlords. More robust law changes are needed if young people are ever going to feel secure.