Rent tribunal backlogs fuel rent control calls

Approved *in full* in 36%, approved increase in nearly 80%.

Only a fraction will not get an increase and a handful may drop, still worth going to tribunal as you would find out what they thought the rent should be for the next year (plus 5%)

Clearly too dumb to recognise that delays in the process work in tenants’ favour against LLs, as proposed rent increases are not backdated.

Having read through some of the tribunal cases there doesn’t seem to be any consistency with the claims. Some of the proposed increases were huge but a lot weren’t. Some of the awards were fairly chunky as the rents had been way below market rent in the first place. Some cases were very poorly prepared and looked like a try on from either party.

To try to minimise the number of spurious claims why don’t they say anything that resembles the government formula for Social Housing rent increases can’t be challenged? It’s already a formula that has been in place for many years. September’s CPI + 1% to take effect from the following April.
That would give a degree of certainty to tenants and landlords who are already at close to market rent, while still allowing other landlords to increase below market rents to something more realistic.

Reply to the comment left by David at 05/11/2026 – 10:05
Sums up how muddled tenants unions are in their thinking. On the one hand they’re telling renters to auto-challenge increases because it delays any increase, and on the other, claiming they are disadvantaged because of the Tribunal delays. The only party disadvantaged by delays is the landlord, but anny increase which places the rent at market, should be auto-agreed by the Tribunal. Of course, we know that’s not what’s happening in practice.

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 05/11/2026 – 09:12
… you need to recognise that the sectors failure to oppose successive regulations has left landlords bearing the capital and maintenance costs, together with all the capital and occupational risks, while stripping away the benefits of ownership. Landlords remain the nominal owner, while the state and tenants become the effective beneficial owners.

As far as the state is concerned, it is all going to plan. The Tribunals will become overwhelmed, comprehensive rent regulation will be introduced as the cure, property values will collapse, and tenants’ rights of first refusal on sale will be reinstated, leaving tenants as effectively the only buyers.

We saw this before the Housing Act 1988. Read the political history of property ownership. None of this should come as a surprise. The only difference is that today’s confiscatory regimes are far more sophisticated and efficient.

This tribual system is working exactly as it was designed to. All tenants using it end up financially better off because the increase is not backdated so many more tenants will use it. Just make sure it is underfunded and understaffed and you get rent control through the back door. Labour must be hugging themselves at how clever they think they are.

Rents cannot stay the same. They all need increasing substantially to cover all the extra taxes red tape and everything this government is inflicting on private landlords that have been cleverly manipulated by government policies into a vulnerable position where they’re trapped by punitive taxes and stamp duty if they manage to sell at below market value or run a very high risk of paying full whack council tax and no rent for a year if they don’t succeed in selling.

Let’s hope lots of landlords with little or no equity simply stop paying the banks and keep collecting rent until the banks reposses lots of properties.
Then that’ll make the big banks into corporate landlords which will be virtually impossible for draconian councillors to control.

Reply to the comment left by John Hole at 05/11/2026 – 20:06
… think again… the regulations have been expertly designed to reach beyond rental income and ultimately into landlords’ capital values, forcing owners to absorb the costs of ever-increasing regulatory obligations and tenants’ rights, even if that drives mortgaged owners into negative equity.

The people you’re up against believe that the capital gains accumulated since the Housing Act 1988 laid the foundations for the modern buy-to-let market have been made at tenants’ expense.

As one Labour MP was reportedly heard to observe:

“It is only property returning to the state.”

The underlying ideology is that any profit derived from someone else’s need for housing is fundamentally illegitimate. The objective is not simply to regulate the PRS but to use the gains accumulated since 1988 to fund an improvement in tenants living conditions, reduce the cost of housing benefit and gain the vote of the 11 million individual renters.

Why do you think Labour refuses to engage in any meaningful discussion about the economics of the PRS? Because, ideologically, it is an economic model they believe should never have existed.

… The situation is considerably worse than the market has yet recognised. Landlords still think they’re negotiating the terms of regulation. They haven’t grasped that it’s the legitimacy of their ownership benefits that’s being challenged.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at 05/11/2026 – 21:46
And the Tories started it

Reply to the comment left by Vanessa Shenton at 05/11/2026 – 10:41
same. but u could sell as an investment with the tenants. prob for a premium if article 4 direction!