The Financial Times says the Labour Party is poised to reject the increasingly shrill calls for rent controls made by the party’s London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Khan first argued for rent controls in 2016; he has no authority to implement such controls but wants to be given increased powers over the private rental sector by the UK government.
Recently Khan proposed a “rent controls commission” to use a new register of landlords and rents to work out how existing rents should be gradually reduced and impose limits on rent rises between tenancies.
But the FT today says: “Senior party insiders told the Financial Times that Starmer’s office was not exploring introducing national rent controls or devolving related powers to mayors if elected.”
Labour in Wales has already rejected rent controls but the Scottish Labour Party is in favour.
London rents on newly let properties rose 17.2 per cent in the year to April, according to data this week from lettings agency Hamptons. It says the average monthly rent in the capital is over £2,200 for the first time.
Last month Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer told the Mirror newspaper that if elected to power he would create a national register of landlord to protect tenants from what the party calls “unscrupulous property owners.:
He told the Mirror he stands behind a “talented generation … left behind and forced to struggle” with fast-increasing rents.
Starmer says in the interview: “There is a whole generation of young people, with dreams of homeownership, that now feel unattainable and unrealistic. Generation rent have been completely abandoned by this government. Left to attempt to cope through a cost of living crisis forcing them into endlessly spiralling costs, and too many unscrupulous landlords having the power to do what they want.”
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