Friday 01 May 2026 18:11
There were celebrations across the Labor front row as the Tenants’ Rights Act came into force today. That won’t last, writes Ben Hopkinson
Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck famously called rent control “the most efficient technique currently known for destroying a city – except by bombing.” Someone must have communicated this to No 10 and the Ministry of Housing last week, given how quickly they shut down rumors that Rachel Reeves was considering a rent freeze ahead of the local elections.
It is unfortunate that the government’s Tenants’ Rights Act, which comes into force today, will have equally dire consequences. More rights for renters may sound good – but it’s no use if there are no properties available to rent.
What does the Renter’s Rights Act actually do?
The main policy of the Act is eliminating Section 21 evictions, also known as ‘no fault’ evictions. This allows fixed term tenancies by giving landlords the power to regain possession of their property after the agreed term expires. Since this Law comes into force, every rental is effectively unlimited.c
There is a fundamental argument against this: why can’t tenants and landlords agree on the term of the contract between them? But there is also a practical reason: if landlords believe they can easily regain possession, they are more likely to relinquish the property.
With this protection lost, landlords have no certainty of getting their property back at the agreed time. Instead, they may have to jump through many hoops, including backlogged courts and queues to get to bailiffs, resulting in significant loss of revenue.
So it’s no surprise that thousands of landlords put up last-minute Section 21 notices in the final weeks of April. They know how bad this change is.
Landlords will be more likely to ignore first-time tenants
However, the law also changes who has the right to rent a flat. The law prohibits tenants from paying rent in advance and prohibits landlords from accepting offers above the initial asking price. Without the ability to compete on price, prospective renters are forced to compete in other areas. That could mean checking CVs, references from previous owners and hiring within personal networks.
This would be a disaster for young people trying to move from their childhood home into their first rental. Without a rental history, and perhaps having a lower income compared to those further along their career ladder, they will appear riskier on paper, meaning landlords are likely to overlook them.
Perhaps most important of all, this act brings rent control through the back door. The rental price is no longer determined based on an agreement between the tenant and the owner. Instead, tenants would be empowered to challenge rent increases through the courts.
Until the court makes a decision, the tenant will pay the existing rent – and the court’s decision will not apply retroactively. Courts are also prohibited from recommending higher rents than those proposed by the landlord. So there is no reason for a tenant not to go to court.
With 11 million private renters and only 34 court judges, the system would likely be overwhelmed in a heartbeat. That means Rachel Reeves got her wish to freeze rent.
An exodus of landlords will not improve the rental sector
If we want a functioning private rental sector, then it must be in the interests of both tenants and landlords to enter into agreements. Over the past decade there have been increases in stamp duty for landlords, tax changes meaning they can no longer deduct mortgage interest from their tax, and increased regulatory requirements such as increased energy efficiency, all of which add to costs. The impact will be a net loss of 300,000 homes on the private rental market between 2016 and 2023.
The Renter’s Rights Act accelerated this change. Over the past year, 254,000 buy-to-let properties were sold. This will only get worse when the full impact of the Act becomes clear.
Rather than implementing rent control through the back door and inadvertently destroying the rental market, the government needs to take action to create better rental deals for renters and landlords.
There were celebrations on the Labor front row as the Tenants’ Rights Act came into force. In a few years’ time, when they are left to gaze upon a cityscape devoid of rental properties, the atmosphere will probably be more shock than excitement.
Ben Hopkinson is head of housing and infrastructure at the Center for Policy Studies
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.