What immediate action could tackle ‘out of control’ rent prices?

Published

1 year ago

March 21, 2024

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There was more bad news for renters this week as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released their latest figures on price rises.

Private rent has rocketed again, with the average increase to monthly payments hitting 9% across the UK – despite inflation sitting at 3.4%.

And while average rents went up to £723 a month in Wales – a 9% rise – and £944 in Scotland – a 10.9% rise – the average each month in England reached £1,276 – up 8.8%.

Politics live: Tories suffer another defection to Reform UK

This is far from a new problem, as according to the ONS; the percentage increase on monthly rents has been gradually rising since May 2021 – following a drop during the pandemic.

There is an ongoing call for more houses to be built – and social housing in particular – but what could be done now to help those seeing their wages increasingly eaten up by putting a roof over their heads?

Generation Rent: ‘Out of control’

Generation Rent, a campaign group representing renters, says the market is “completely out of control”.

Speaking to Sky News, its policy and public affairs manager Connor O’Shea says: “Why are rent rises bigger than inflation? Because they can be.

“Landlords are being told and encouraged to put the rent up by whatever they want as there are so many people desperate for a home.”

Mr O’Shea says renters are being forced to view properties at the same time as other people to pile pressure on to make an offer, told to pay 12 months’ rent in advance to secure a property, and increasingly placed into bidding wars.

The campaigner is also warning of an increasing phenomena of what Generation Rent calls “economic evictions”, where landlords raise rents so astronomically, people are forced to move home.

Cap rents at local wage growth or inflation

The group has a number of policy proposals to help “slam the breaks” on the hikes, including introducing a mechanism where rent increases are capped by either the local wage growth figure or local inflation in specific areas.

They also want to see rent control powers devolved to regional mayors who could bring in measures in hot spots.

“There is an emergency in a lot of these places,” says Mr O’Shea. “The prices are unaffordable across the board, but in the inner cities there are real issues stemming off the back of these rent increases, driving people out of their homes.

“So… we don’t think rent controls should happen across the country, but perhaps in the worst hit areas of London, of Manchester, of Newcastle, wherever it may be, that local authority mayor could step in.”

NRLA: Use tax to boost rental sector

But the chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), Ben Beadle, says the government needs to “play with the tax levers” and encourage more people into renting out homes to prevent further rises.

Speaking to Sky News, he says there has been “white hot demand” in the sector as landlords were “exiting in droves”, but their homes were not going back into the private rental market.

“According to Zoopla, landlords are getting 15 inquiries per property – double what is was before the pandemic,” he says. “So it is like surge pricing for an Uber. If more people are looking, the prices are going to surge.

“And the reason why landlords are exiting at such rates is the growing costs of mortgage rates.”

After the mini-budget of Liz Truss’ premiership, rates rocketed, hitting a high of 6.86% in July last year – compared to 2.34% in December 2021.

And while the rates have begun to subside, an average two-year fixed mortgage is still 5.79%.

The NRLA chief also points to a government move in 2015 to phase out the amount of tax relief landlords could get on their by-to-let mortgages, as well as the 3% stamp duty introduced on the purchase of long-term homes to rent.

Mr Beadle thinks taking immediate action on revising those tax changes would have an immediate impact on the price of rent.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: The long awaited Renter’s Reform Bill

Senior economist for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), Rachelle Earwaker, accepts there has been “some uncertainty” for landlords, and their costs have increased.

But she believes there is one measure that would “cost the government nothing” and totally change the market.

“Bring in the Renter’s Reform Bill,” she says, speaking to Sky News.

The Conservatives’ proposed legislation makes a number of promises around strengthening renters’ rights and includes a long-awaited ban on “no-fault” evictions, which allow landlords to claim back properties and remove tenants without giving a reason.

But despite first being proposed in 2019, it has still failed to make its way through parliament, and it is unclear when the legislation is set to return

Shelter: Limited in-tenancy rises

Shelter also wants to see the government make private renting “more secure and affordable”.

Similar to Generation Rent, the homelessness charity’s chief executive, Polly Neate, is calling for ministers to “limit in-tenancy rent increases to protect tenants from being forced out of their homes by a sudden and unexpected rent hike”.

But the Shelter CEO is joining JRF’s call for the Renter’s Reform Bill to be enacted, telling Sky News the government has to keep its promise to pass a “water tight bill”.

She says: “Private renting has reached boiling point. Decades of failure to build genuinely affordable social homes has made private renting the only option for many, and as a result, competition for overpriced and often shoddy rentals is fierce.

“Landlords can hike up the rent, safe in the knowledge that if their tenants can’t pay, they can issue a no-fault eviction with just two months’ notice and get a new tenant at a higher rent.”

She adds: “Getting rid of Section 21 no fault evictions will mean renters can challenge unfair rent increases without worrying about being slapped with a retaliatory eviction by their landlord.”

Generation Rent’s Mr O’Shea calls the bill the “elephant in the room” on how to fix rising costs, adding: “It is impossible to ignore this problem now. It is actually damaging to the economy as a whole, because if someone is paying 40% of their income on rent alone then they are not spending in other places.”

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “We recognise the cost-of-living pressures on tenants are facing, and our landmark Renters Reform Bill offers a new, fairer deal for tenants and landlords.”

Politics

Mandelson appointment was ‘worth the risk’ despite ‘strong relationship’ with Epstein, says minister

Published

4 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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Mandelson appointment was 'worth the risk' despite 'strong relationship' with Epstein, says minister

Appointing Lord Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US was “worth the risk”, a minister has told Sky News.

Peter Kyle said the government put the Labour peer forward for the Washington role, despite knowing he had a “strong relationship” with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

It is this relationship that led to Peter Mandelson being fired on Thursday by the prime minister.

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But explaining the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson, Business Secretary Mr Kyle said: “The risk of appointing [him] knowing what was already public was worth the risk.

“Now, of course, we’ve seen the emails which were not published at the time, were not public and not even known about. And that has changed this situation.”

Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, he rejected the suggestion that Lord Mandelson was appointed to Washington before security checks were completed.

He explained there was a two-stage vetting process for Lord Mandelson before he took on the ambassador role.

The first was done by the Cabinet Office, while the second was a “political process where there were political conversations done in Number 10 about all the other aspects of an appointment”, he said.

This is an apparent reference to Sir Keir Starmer asking follow-up questions based on the information provided by the vetting.

These are believed to have included why Lord Mandelson continued contact with Epstein after he was convicted and why he was reported to have stayed in one of the paedophile financier’s homes while he was in prison.

Mr Kyle said: “Both of these things turned up information that was already public, and a decision was made based on Peter’s singular talents in this area, that the risk of appointing knowing what was already public was worth the risk.”

Mr Kyle also pointed to some of the government’s achievements under Lord Mandelson, such as the UK becoming the first country to sign a trade deal with the US, and President Donald Trump’s state visit next week.

Mr Kyle also admitted that the government knew that Lord Mandelson and Epstein had “a strong relationship”.

“We knew that there were risks involved,” he concluded.

PM had only ‘extracts of emails’ ahead of defence of Mandelson at PMQs – as Tories accuse him of ‘lying’

Speaking to Sky News, Kyle also sought to clarify the timeline of what Sir Keir Starmer knew about Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, and when he found this out.

It follows Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch accusing the prime minister of “lying to the whole country” about his knowledge of the then US ambassador’s relationship with the paedophile.

Allegations about Lord Mandelson began to emerge in the newspapers on Tuesday, while more serious allegations – that the Labour peer had suggested Epstein’s first conviction for sexual offences was wrongful and should be challenged – were sent to the Foreign Office on the same day by Bloomberg, which was seeking a response from the government.

But the following day, Sir Keir went into the House of Commons and publicly backed Britain’s man in Washington, giving him his full confidence. Only the next morning – on Thursday – did the PM then sack Lord Mandelson, a decision Downing Street has insisted was made based on “new information”.

Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Mr Kyle said: “Number 10 had what was publicly available on Tuesday, which was extracts of emails which were not in context, and they weren’t the full email.

“Immediately upon having being alerted to extracts of emails, the Foreign Office contacted Peter Mandelson and asked for his account of the emails and asked for them to be put into context and for his response. That response did not come before PMQs [on Wednesday].

“Then after PMQs, the full emails were released by Bloomberg in the evening.

“By the first thing the next morning when the prime minister had time to read the emails in full, having had them in full and reading them almost immediately of having them – Peter was withdrawn as ambassador.”

The Conservatives have claimed Sir Keir is lying about what he knew, with Laura Trott telling Sky News there are “grave questions about the prime minister’s judgement”.

The shadow education secretary called for “transparency”, and told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips: “We need to understand what was known and when.”

They believe that Sir Keir was in possession of the full emails on Tuesday, because the Foreign Office passed these to Number 10. This is despite the PM backing Mandelson the following day.

Ms Trott explained: “We are calling for transparency because, if what we have outlined is correct, then the prime minister did lie and that is an extremely, extremely serious thing to have happened.”

She added: “This was a prime minister who stood on the steps of Downing Street and said that he was going to restore political integrity and look where we are now. We’ve had two senior resignations in the space of the number of weeks.

“The prime minister’s authority is completely shot.”

But Ms Trott refused to be drawn on whether she thinks Sir Keir should resign, only stating that he is “a rudderless, a weak prime minister whose authority is shot at a time we can least afford it as a country”.

Politics

Labour MPs already angry over claim Mandelson’s appointment was ‘worth the risk’

Published

8 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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Labour MPs already angry over claim Mandelson's appointment was 'worth the risk'

If you want to know why so many Labour MPs are seething over the government’s response to the Mandelson saga, look no further than my mobile phone at 9.12am this Sunday.

At the top of the screen is a news notification about an interview with the family of a victim of the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, saying his close friend Peter Mandelson should “never have been made” US ambassador.

Directly below that, a Sky News notification on the business secretary’s interview, explaining that the appointment of Lord Mandelson to the job was judged to be “worth the risk” at the time.

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Peter Kyle went on to praise Lord Mandelson’s “outstanding” and “singular” talents and the benefits that he could bring to the US-UK relationship.

While perhaps surprisingly candid in nature about the decision-making process that goes on in government, this interview is unlikely to calm concerns within Labour.

Quite the opposite.

For many in the party, this is a wholly different debate to a simple cost-benefit calculation of potential political harm.

As one long-time party figure put it to my colleague Sam Coates: “I don’t care about Number Ten or what this means for Keir or any of that as much as I care that this culture of turning a blind eye to horrendous behaviour is endemic at the top of society and Peter Kyle has literally just come out and said it out loud.

“He was too talented and the special relationship too fraught for his misdeeds to matter enough. It’s just disgusting.”

There are two problems for Downing Street here.

The first is that you now have a government which – after being elected on the promise to restore high standards – appears to be admitting that previous indiscretions can be overlooked if the cause is important enough.

Package that up with other scandals that have resulted in departures – Louise Haigh, Tulip Siddiq, Angela Rayner – and you start to get a stink that becomes hard to shift.

The second is that it once again demonstrates an apparent lack of ability in government to see around corners and deal with political and policy crises, before they start knocking lumps out of the Prime Minister.

Remember, for many the cardinal sin here was not necessarily the original appointment of Mandelson (while eyebrows were raised at the time, there was nowhere near the scale of outrage we’ve had in the last week with many career diplomats even agreeing the with logic of the choice) but the fact that Sir Keir Starmer walked into PMQs and gave the ambassador his full-throated backing when it was becoming clear to many around Westminster that he simply wouldn’t be able to stay in post.

The explanation from Downing Street is essentially that a process was playing out, and you shouldn’t sack an ambassador based on a media enquiry alone.

But good process doesn’t always align with good politics.

Something this barrister-turned-politician may now be finding out the hard way.

Politics

Man admits arson after major fire at MP Sharon Hodgson’s constituency office

Published

10 hours ago

September 14, 2025

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Man admits arson after major fire at MP Sharon Hodgson's constituency office

A man has admitted arson after a major fire at an MP’s constituency office.

Joshua Oliver, 28, pleaded guilty to starting the fire which destroyed the office of Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, at Vermont House in Washington, Tyne and Wear.

The fire also wrecked a small charity for people with very rare genetic diseases and an NHS mental health service for veterans.

The guilty plea was entered at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court on the basis that it was reckless rather than intentional.

The Crown did not accept that basis of plea.

Oliver, of no fixed address, had been living in a tent nearby, the court heard.

Northumbria Police previously said it was “alerted to a fire at a premises on Woodland Terrace in the Washington area” shortly after 12.20am on Thursday.

“Emergency services attended and no one is reported to have been injured in the incident,” it added.

Drone footage from the scene showed extensive damage to the building.

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Our prosecutors have worked to establish that there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial and that it is in the public interest to pursue criminal proceedings.

“We have worked closely with Northumbria Police as they carried out their investigation.”

Oliver was remanded in custody and will appear at Newcastle Crown Court on Tuesday, 14 October.