Prime Minister and tenant groups celebrate Renters’ Rights Act

Reading this just makes me want to sell up.

It’ll be a short lived celebration as Landlords sell up, thereby removing available rental properties from the market. So, a very shallow victory indeed.

Reply to the comment left by Phil Hayward at 21/05/2026 – 10:09
Yes indeed.

I smell a rat. Oh no not just one, a den of rats.
Obviously we have two sets of rules in this country.

Of course they are celebrating. They are left-wingers and they’ve managed to squeak some 1970s-style-left-wing-labour policies into some legislation that could otherwise have been both more useful and less damaging to market-delivery (that they just don’t believe in because they still believe in fairies). Kier Starmer has also apparently recently invited Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman back as advisors or consultants and that should tell you something.

A woman told me once that “…babies are like f*rts, you only like your own.” Labour were very critical of conservative party “lies” but they love the smell of their own. Ughhhh…..somebody needs to open a window and let some air in to the room and as we still have the civilising influence of free-speech hopefully either the press or one of the other political parties will do that. With their amendments to the renters rights bill that became the Labour Renters Rights Act labour have shown their true colours.

Labour education policy means that every child at school gets a poor education. Tony Blair’s legacy of every child being able to go to university meant that every child could get a ‘degree’…but they couldn’t necessarily get a job, or even get started in the workplace, especially not now since labour increased employers NI and the minimum wage, and reduced the level at which employers’ NI kicks in. The provisions that labour introduced into the Labour Renters Rights Act that eliminate competition and disincentivise supply mean that EVERYBODY in the private rented sector will pay higher rents. But that’s what labour want. It means that a growing proportion of voters have less freedom, feel more pain and are more dependent upon them to try and avoid it. This is left-wing success, they are probably joyous right now. Privately, having achieved their little ideological victor, labour are probably revelling in the pain that they have caused and are going to cause.

But no labour government ever interfered in an industry and then managed to deliver a reliable car for you or a useful phone. The SNP can’t build ships on time or on budget. Most government driven projects are a f*****p especially left-wing projects delivered by unionised industries. The best that you can really hope for from a government is that it doesn’t do anything to stand in the way of allowing market delivery to solve a problem, without damaging the environment. That’s not labour or the SNP.

Knowing what the real consequences are for both landlords and tenants their “celebration” makes me want to retch. The real winners from the Labour Renters Rights Act are agents and large incorporated businesses. Somewhere out there there must be a next-generation of competent politicians who both have experience of business and are sufficiently competent communicators to be able to communicate a real-world message to the electorate.

Stoma really is full of sch1tt ! “We had to fight for this”. Him and his Commie cohorts are celebrating Osborne and Gove’s garbage Act.

Reply to the comment left by GEORGE WARREN at 21/05/2026 – 16:25
It is true that George Osborne introduced the change that resulted in landlords who weren’t incorporated being unable to offset their finance costs against rents, thereby penalising small landlords and favouring large incorporated property-owning groups who would be likely to be able to take market share and maximise rents. And this change introduced by George Osborne is one of the changes that drives up rents because it forces landlords to raise rents to recover the extra tax, and drives out the competition in the marketplace provided by small landlords.

However, even though I was never a fan of Michael Gove, the Labour Renters Rights Act isn’t the bill that Michael Gove and others were arguing for. Because it reached its final iteration under a majority labour, left-wing government, some crazy stuff crept into it during the later stages of its evolution. And these crazy, left-wing ideas have the effect that EVERYBODY in the private rental sector will face higher rents. Indirectly this also affects the welfare bill because councils can’t house everybody as they don’t have enough housing and they have to pay housing benefit or house people in temporary accommodation.

Whilst labour are celebrating their little ideological win, the reality of the Labour Renters Rights Act is that they have made things worse for everybody. The best of the labour MPs (i.e. the most honest) are unconsciously incompetent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

The worst of them are just prepared to lie about the real effect of their policies, or don’t care because they are ideologically opposed to market delivery. Labour are laughing and celebrating now, but it is tenants and the tax payer who will pay for their incompetence and their dishonesty.

If you can’t beat them…..etc.!

I will be doing a 2 month rental on a 3 bed here

https://uncle.co.uk/leeds/three-bedroom/

Summer only
Does anyone want a week ?
£650 per week to my fellow Landlords, sadly no pets as I want my deposit back!

Sleeps 6 so much cheaper than a hotel!

Call me!!

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 21/05/2026 – 16:59
Well, Imho the 3 absolute worst parts are abolishing section 21, Periodic tenancies and Possession Grounds and these are clearly the work of the previous “government”.

Reply to the comment left by GEORGE WARREN at 21/05/2026 – 18:35
I was listening to a radio 4 programme this week when Ken Clarke was commenting and said that both labour and the conservatives had delivered poor governance over the last ten years. So I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. George Osborne might have felt that stopping landlords from offsetting their finance costs against rents (if they weren’t incorporated) might have been perceived by a middle-income electorate as giving their kids a better chance of getting on the housing ladder. In reality this didn’t make much difference when interest rates were low, but when interest rates rose, this policy drove rents up. And the effect of this tax policy is that it encourages ownership by incorporated bodies and drives competition provided by small landlords out of the private rented sector.

I agree with you on section 21, periodic tenancies and possession grounds. But the reason why Section 21 (no fault evictions) periodic tenancies and possession grounds were important is because they were actually hiding the fact that the REAL problems in the market had not been fixed. The “Renters Rights Act Information Sheet” is here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69bc04b8f7b1c24d8e23ce60/The_Renters__Rights_Act_Information_Sheet_2026.pdf

What this says about “if your landlord wants to end your tenancy” is this:

– If you have not paid your rent on time
– If you, others living with you, or visitors commit antisocial behaviour in or near the property
– If you, or others living with you, do not care for the property properly
– If your tenancy was for certain purposes, for example it was connected to your employment, or was for temporary or supported accommodation

That’s the GOOD bit. Being given an excuse to send a document that says what every landlord wants (1) pay the rent on time and in full (2) get on with the neighbours (3) look after the property, or I can get rid of you, is great. Good landlords…the majority…. want good long-term tenants, most provide safe homes and most don’t evict. That’s what the conservatives were actually talking about in general terms (yes, I have reservations about Michael Gove and what George Osborne did).

But whilst I might flag up ‘the good bit’ a problem arises because we all know landlords who have had to go to court for a year or two years to get their properties back and some have faced tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage. And if a tenant exhibits antisocial behaviour due process is for the neighbours to report that to the council. But the council is unlikely to give you, the landlord, evidence of that behaviour so that you can evict the tenant because the council knows that it has an obligation to house ‘homeless’ tenants and knows that it is only going to be shifting the problem somewhere else. In SOME cases the police do investigate antisocial behaviour, because they have an obligation to do so, but just because they investigate antisocial behaviour it does not follow that you, the landlord, will be given the documentary evidence of that antisocial behaviour in a form that you can use in court to evict. So section 21 evictions were important because they were a sticking plaster….something that you could use in extremis because of SOMETHING ELSE THAT WAS IMPORTANT that had not yet been fixed by any competent government.

One of the other problems landlords face is the fact that if a tenant is on benefits and it subsequently transpires that the tenant was not eligible for benefits, or becomes ineligible for benefits during a tenancy, then the council/benefits people will come back and try to get the money back from you, the landlord. But as the landlord you don’t have the powers to check tenant eligibility beyond perhaps first-letting when you are looking at right to rent and evidence of income and/or assets. Whilst the tenant is in the property, having carried out the regular safety checks, as a landlord you actually have to leave the tenants alone to live their lives and your powers don’t extend to much more than a landlord’s inspection having given 24 hours notice.

A competent government could have fixed the real problems. A competent government could have created an obligation upon councils or the police to provide the evidence you need to apply for eviction in the event of a problem. A competent government could have exempted you from having to check that your tenant was eligible for benefits after first letting the property. A competent government could have stopped you from having to go to the courts if you had this evidence. But this did not happen. Labour didn’t fix the real problems that were the reason for the existence of section 21. In their stupidity and their ignorance, they are now just gloating over their petty ideological win.

But labour DIDN’T fix the real problems with their Labour Renters Rights Act. They may well have collectively been too stupid or too ignorant to even understand them. Being in a majority left-wing government they were probably too arrogant to listen and they will probably be too arrogant to admit that they made a mistake. They did things that didn’t need to be done…banning landlords from taking offers of higher rent, banning landlords from taking rent upfront, banning landlords from taking more than the advertised rent, threatening to limit rent increases rather than just sticking to ‘market rent’ and looking instead at the real-world factors that reduce competition and supply or increase risk. And they increased landlords’ risks and costs ON TOP of the conservative policy of stopping landlords from offsetting their finance payments against rents without reversing that. They also imposed obligations not to discriminate (against social-housing tenants for example), stopping you from withholding evidence of availability, which in taking out the subjectivity ‘this one’s got a job and has had a job for five years’ means that you have to apply more stringent measures, more stringent credit-referencing checks, additional insurance costs to EVERYBODY THAT APPLIES TO RENT YOUR PROPERTY.

But all of the unnecessary changes increase landlords’ risk and increase landlords’ costs, especially if they aren’t incorporated, on top of the risk created by taking the sticking plaster off the open wound. What this means is that many landlords will have had to increase rents in anticipation of the Labour Renters Rights Act when previously they weren’t bothering. Those small landlords that weren’t keeping up to speed and weren’t raising rents regularly will be brought up to speed now, and will raise rents regularly year-on-year, because they have to in order to mitigate their risk. Some will have issued Section 21 notices in the advance of the Labour Renters Rights Act.

Labour haven’t fixed the courts yet. Labour actually refused to publish their findings from the court impact test:

https://mortgagesoup.co.uk/govt-declines-to-publish-renters-rights-bill-court-impact-assessment/

Labour didn’t address the real problems in the marketplace. Instead, with their Renters Rights Act they took the sticking plaster off and chucked a lot of dirt into the unhealed sore.

So because of labour’s failure to diagnose, understand and address the REAL problems in the rental marketplace what this means is that higher costs have to be imposed upon everybody as landlords and their agents try to avoid getting stuck with the higher risk tenants. EVERY tenant suffers for labour-government stupidity, incompetence and arrogance.

Of course the prime minister is celebrating. The “…we got rid of no-fault evictions…” message because this media soundbite is an easy thing to clap if you think that a proportion of the electorate still believes in you, your empty promises and the incompetents around you. But what the electorate has collectively failed to realise yet is that it is GOVERNMENT POLICY that is driving up rents in the private rented sector. That’s what happens if you don’t know what you are doing, you don’t fix the real problems and instead you meddle, unnecessarily reduce competition and unnecessarily drive up costs and risks for investors.

Doing all that while you are still sticking with the “…we are going to build 1.5 million homes” lie is bizarre isn’t it? If you had unprecedented levels of government debt because of the legacy of Covid (which labour is as responsible for as anybody else), you desperately needed to spend more money on defence and energy security, you didn’t have enough money to build the new homes or fix the courts, why would you make it even more risky for investors to invest in a commodity that you needed more of? Answer…because you are incompetent, you deliver poor governance and heavy-handed legislation that does not address the real problems in a market you don’t understand and don’t believe in.

Real working people suffer for that. stupidity…the ‘strivers’ striving to find and afford a home and a job…..these are tenants…and they suffer for labour stupidity because of labour ideology driving up rents.