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10:24 AM, 7th September 2023, About 8 months ago 13
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The appointment of Angela Rayner by the Labour Party as Shadow Housing Secretary means that landlords might have a Jeremy Corbyn supporter keen to bring in draconian laws for landlords in the private rented sector (PRS), one landlords’ organisation warns.
Ms Rayner’s appointment this week by Kier Starmer follows the surprise demotion of Lisa Nandy from the post.
But Chris Norris, policy director at the National Residential Landlords Association, said that Ms Rayner’s association with the left of the party, and Jeremy Corbyn’s policies, may give some landlords cause for concern.
However, he says that Labour will probably not want to rock the PRS boat too much before the next General Election.
Chris told Property118: “I know how badly shaken the sector is at the moment by what the current government are doing.
“And with Angela Rayner coming to the department, I question quite how interested she’s going to be in housing.
“To me, this looks a lot like the previous Labour government putting John Prescott in charge of an awful lot of very important things and then hopefully having some focused junior shadow ministers beneath them.”
He added: “But we just really want to see some detail because we have had a reasonable dialogue with the Labour team about what they’re thinking.”
Chris says that Labour hasn’t published any plans for the PRS since its ‘New Deal for Housing’ in 2018 – and it didn’t have a huge amount of detail.
No one knows what Labour’s plans for landlords and the PRS are.
Chris said: “Obviously, they’ve made statements here and there, and we’ve seen the recent stuff about rent control, plus the commentary about what the government is doing with renters’ reform.
“But there has not been a manifesto, just an open statement about what they’re planning to do with housing.”
“Lots of landlords, lots of letting agents and people in the industry are pretty fed up with what the government are doing and there’s not a lot of optimism about what’s coming out of the government at the moment and the direction of travel.
“But there’s not a viable alternative being shown from our point of view by the Labour Party, and that leaves a vacuum.”
He added: “And from the conversations I have with our members, I think there’s quite often a sense that it takes a long time to overcome the baggage of previous elections.
“There are still a lot of people that I think are quite concerned by the previous leadership with Jeremy Corbyn and some of the more traditionally Labour or the more radical proposals that were that were made then.”
The worries over what Labour wants to do doesn’t extend to a move towards rent controls or even a shift to ‘the hard left’.
Chris said: “I think the more conversations I have with their team, the more I think the Renters (Reform) Bill that’s in front of Parliament at the moment is quite critical.
“I think if that Bill gets through, they will be quite content maybe to put some of their broader agenda around private landlords onto a back burner.
“I think the Bill ticks a lot of boxes for them at the moment.”
He says that landlords may not see action from Labour immediately if they do win the next election, but speculation is mounting about what might happen post-election.
Chris explains: “What would concern me is actually what kind of agency or what kind of leeway the regional mayors are given.
“And I think English devolution is probably a bigger risk to our market than possibly proposals or policies that are likely to come out of Angela Rayner’s department.
“I think if you consider the kind of things that certainly Sadiq Khan has been saying over the last couple of years, and some of the areas that Andy Burnham has looked at in Manchester, should those mayors be given the powers that they would like, I think we could start to see rent freezes.”
he adds: “We could start to see greater intervention in different parts of the country.
“And that could be particularly damaging to landlords looking to invest, and it would be another blow, frankly, to those landlords that do want to provide homes in those areas that they’re most needed.”
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robert fisher
7:45 AM, 8th September 2023, About 8 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Whitby Host at 07/09/2023 - 20:05
I agree, rent in London is ridiculously high, i don't know how people afford it. London should have its own special rules as it is not reflective of the rest of the country . But every one knows that the only answer is to build social housing so that councils have a stock of houses like they did before the big sell off.
Fergus Wilson
7:53 AM, 9th September 2023, About 8 months ago
One thing is certain and that is there will be a Labour Government next time around!
Time to exit the Private Rented Sector?
Beaver
10:56 AM, 11th September 2023, About 8 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Fergus Wilson at 09/09/2023 - 07:53
I think the chance of there being a labour government next time around is high and the labour party really need to learn from the damage that the SNP is doing to the PRS in Scotland. We won't know whether it's a good idea to exit the PRS in England until we see what policies they come out with.
Anybody who isn't an accidental landlord and has a choice already needs to be exiting the PRS in Scotland; or they need to be driving their rents up as high as possible now if they are just entering the market and selling now isn't a good option just in case they cannot do it later.