Andy Burnham demands tougher powers against landlords providing poor housing

And what about councils and the public sector, the worst culprits of all?
Private landlords are paragons of virtue by comparison.

Reply to the comment left by Roger Radford at 22/05/2026 – 09:38
Wow ,I’m up for that , can he buy mine ,
I’ll get the champagne out

Just checking, but wonder have I missed what he said about tenants wrecking properties, not paying the rent and where there is anti-social behaviour. I’m sure he would wish to be equal with his criticism, but of course, there are more tenants who may vote rather than landlords in favour of Labour and that may be persuasive in what has become a totally unbalanced, one-sided attack on landlords, without any recognition for the work we try to do, often under the most difficult of circumstances.

Another good reason not to vote for this far left socialist. If Andy Burnham does become PM then if he has compulsory purchase on his mind, which is just blatant stealing then the four months notice will be used to sell the rented property with a Dor E EPC rating. This will trigger a tidal wave of landlords selling their properties. The amount of D and E EPC rated rental properties must be in the millions in the UK.

The trouble is that the champagne socialists have a very different view of what is poor housing. The humble Victorian terrace has been a suitable home for generations but now not good enough for them.

Well I have news – high quality housing is more expensive, an inescapable fact that politicians seem to incapable of understanding.

Err..check local authority properties first, LA`s break housing rules, proportionally, far more than the PRS. Burnham does not know anything about the PRS, he`s a bandwagon jumping opportunist.

Councils are basically immune. There would be no point in fining themselves !!

I used to live near Caracas………and used to see Chavez on TV all the time, walking around the city “appropriating” (his words) properties from private owners.
These were mostly small hotels and B&B but rented apartments too.
Within a year of government mismanagement, they all ended up boarded up. Because it turns out civil servants are hopeless at running businesses.
This is why Venezuela is the thriving utopia it is today.

If Labour want to get serious about housing, they need to build their own social homes and stop selling them. Our property is not a part of government housing.
He is another mouth trying to grab the tenant vote with his talk about ‘aligning’ CGT with income tax rates (without aligning the annual £12570 nil bands of income tax).

No, Mr Burnham. The reason for the housing crisis is structural because your party nationalised development rights in 1947 under the Town & Country Planning Act. Experts all agree that it is this piece of legislation that is causing the severest bottleneck in the UK economy because too few developers can get past the NIMBYs who object to planning applications. In my own parish, a developer has been fighting the local council and local residents for a whopping 17 years. During that time, the original plans have had to be scaled down by up to two thirds. 175 homes reduced to 63. This scenario is being replicated all over the country and it is severely constraining supply. Limited supply makes existing land prices and rents go up, thus causing the crisis in availability and affordability. It is basic market forces at work. Supply and demand. The UK has critical supply side woes throughout the economy, but I wouldn’t expect socialists to comprehend this. They see everything through the lens of their own dogma, which is to tax wealth out of existence, thus making everyone poorer. But hey, if you and your neighbour are equally poor, that is the zenith of a socialist utopia.