Why is the Labour government gambling with tenants’ homes?

Apparently, the Labour government can redesign the private rented sector, raise landlords’ taxes and remove a possession route used for decades without calculating what the whole package will cost.

That is not policymaking, it is gambling, except ministers are playing with other people’s homes.

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage has now admitted there was ‘no single assessment’ of the combined cost of the Renters’ Rights Act and planned tax increases.

The government assessed the individual measures, we are told, but never stood back and asked the obvious question: what happens when landlords are hit by all of them at once?

Any landlord could have answered it.

MPs without real-world experience

Now we have a cabinet without any real world or business experience who don’t understand that costs and risk rise.

That means that some rents will increase and landlord investment will fall.

It also means that landlord properties are sold, usually to an owner-occupier so they leave the PRS, and tenant selection becomes stricter.

Yet the same government that failed to examine the cumulative burden was happy to present landlords as the source of the housing crisis.

That becomes even harder to swallow when its own English Housing Survey shows that 63% of private tenancies ending in the previous year ended because renters wanted to move.

Only 14% ended because the landlord or agent asked them to leave, while 3% cited a landlord-imposed rent increase.

Section 21 was necessary

Where, then, was the epidemic of ruthless landlords casually throwing good tenants into the street?

Section 21 was never perfect, but the political slogan ‘no-fault eviction’ erased every circumstance behind its use.

A landlord selling, moving back into a property, dealing with serious disruption or reorganising student accommodation was placed in the same moral category as a criminal landlord.

Nobody appears to have asked landlords why notices were being served.

Again, we could have told them.

Tenants who don’t pay

Politicians still don’t understand that landlords do not generally want to evict reliable tenants who pay and look after their homes.

Empty properties produce no income, while changeovers bring costs, uncertainty and work.

We run a business and need to keep costs down.

The idea that landlords wake up eager to remove good occupants has always been nonsense.

The result is a government policy that has been designed around the exceptional case, with every landlord paying the final bill.

Landlord tax bills up

Its tax assessment says the administrative burden of the planned two percentage point property income tax rise will be negligible.

While filling in the tax return may not become much harder, paying the bill certainly will when the increase hits from April 2027.

A landlord who cannot fully offset finance costs, while facing higher interest rates, repairs, insurance, compliance bills and a higher tax rate, has limited choices.

Yes, that does mean increasing the rent, reducing investment or selling.

Ministers may dislike those choices, but their disapproval does not alter the real-world maths of being a landlord.

Tighter tenant screening

And who suffers when the landlord pool shrinks further? Not the wealthy professional with a spotless credit record and a large salary.

It will be the tenant on benefits, the family with limited savings, the applicant with an imperfect history and anyone else regarded as higher risk.

When homes are scarce, landlords do not stop selecting; they select more cautiously.

The loudest tenant campaigners shout about rights, which is fine since we are all entitled to an opinion.

But tenant rights written into legislation do not manufacture cheap to rent properties from thin air, pay for repairs or persuade somebody to risk their life savings.

Combined burden issue

The government has now admitted, too late to have an impact, that it did not assess the combined burden.

The scandal of what has happened to the private rented sector in 2026 is not that ministers failed to predict every consequence; it is that they apparently chose not to count them.

We still don’t have the court impact assessment for abolishing section 21.

We still don’t know what is coming down the line. Can we be sure the landlord database won’t infringe our right to privacy?

While ministers refuse to count the cost of what they have done, landlords and tenants are lumbered with the consequences.

Let’s face it, you can’t drive out landlords and then act surprised when tenants have nowhere to live. Or can you?

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader