When will politicians ever listen to landlords?

They want rental accommodation without the landlords.

They see shopkeepers as providing a service, they see Builders as providing a service, but somehow landlords are parasites!

What strikes me about Pennycook/Labour/ is how they think they are sheltering those from homelessness by attacking/penalising > 3 million landlords when as a government they seem to have failed and are still failing to provide social housing to rent and even still selling off council housing at knock down prices, rather than meeting their ambitious new build target.Also what evidence is there that Corporates are stepping in to replace small private landlords.

A great article. I agree that the most shocking thing about this is the way in which they went through the motions of consultation, evidence gathering and debate and then pushed on with their original plans anyway. Apparently it’s more important to stay faithful to a less well informed election manifesto commitment than to work through what the actual impacts might be.

Now we know that it’s Labour who are pushing this agenda, and the Ex CEO of Shelter has now received her reward for helping labour’s mission to exterminate the PRS landlord, and has been given a seat in the house of Lords.
However as Wales has now shown, Labour and the Conservatives are obsolete.
Vote Advance and rid these career politicians out of office, and help reform this whole corrupt govenment system in our country. Vote Advance for a better britain!

If PRS landlords had taken up my suggestion when the Renters Reform Bill rose it’s head we would likely not be where we are now. But most poo pooed it. No one need to have followed through.
The suggestion was for ALL PRS landlords to serve a s21 notice with a 3 month expiry date on the SAME day with the SAME expiry date.
This would have, I really think, made the government and Local Authorities sit up and listen to landlords, with the prospect of 4.7m potentially homeless on the same day.
Instead they were led by the nose by Tenant campaign groups and the prospect of gaining votes and knowing that landlords weren’t prepared to protect their business.
The likes of the NRLA, imho, have not supported or fought hard enough for those that pay their wages. Thankfully I’ve never been one of those. There is better support out there.
Again, imho, too many PRS landlords are over extended with too high a loan to value, not enough in the bank to cover costs, maintenance and tenants non payment of rent. As well as not knowing the regulations and legislation of the business. No such thing as an accidental landlord, every landlord has made a conscious decision to rent out a property whether a BTL or inheritance or one they used to live in.
PRS landlords who have used Lettings Agents, thinking they know everything, and were more than happy not to know the regulations and legislation of business, forgot or didn’t even know the buck stops with themselves.
The PRS, I fear, has reaped what it has sewn with its complacency, ignorance and blinkers.

Landlord Crusader, you’re using reasoned economic argument — but this isn’t about economics. It’s political. Labour wants to stand at the dispatch box and declare they’ve saved 11 million private renters from homelessness. That’s the headline, and that’s the goal.

Next comes rent control. After that, tenants will be handed the right of first refusal when their landlord sells — at a price conveniently “adjusted” to reflect the new regulatory burdens.

Those depressed figures will then flow straight into Red Book valuations, which form the foundation of the mortgage industry. Once embedded there, the damage is permanent. There’s no way out.

And why stop there? The government will simply extend the Right to Buy. The mechanism has existed since the Housing Act 1980 — transferring it to the private sector is a matter of political will, not legislative difficulty.

Labour knows it won’t deliver 1.5 million new homes. But it doesn’t need to. It will claim victory by pointing to 11 million renters now “protected,” with a “secure, well-maintained home” and the “chance to buy.” It’s a public relations masterstroke — headlines without housebuilding.

Local councils don’t even need new staff. A clipboard and a fine book will do. They already have powers to take over and manage private property at the landlord’s cost, and to acquire it by compulsory purchase if they wish. But why would they bother? It’s far more convenient to let landlords pay the mortgages and bear the maintenance costs — even when those costs exceed the rent.

And where are the landlord organisations? Asleep at the wheel. There should have been a call to action long ago. Instead, they’ve stood by like lap dogs while landlords took on all the capital and occupancy risks — and became, in effect, unpaid council housing officers.

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 24/10/2025 – 10:01
Your suggestion was appreciated.
But and the result could have been favourable in the short term.

But its hard to know how things would have played out.

Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him??

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 10:01

Simultaneous Section 21 notices — that’s the kind of call to action I’m talking about. Not chaos. Not recklessness. Strategy. A short, sharp shock that at most might have caused a couple of months’ rental voids — but would have reshaped the entire Private Rented Sector overnight.
When doctors are mistreated, they strike. When nurses are undervalued, they strike. When transport workers, teachers, or barristers face injustice — they act. But landlords? Silence. Submission.
Had councils suddenly faced 11 million renters at risk of homelessness, the government would have had no choice but to act. Emergency legislation would have followed within days — and landlords would finally have had a seat at the table and a voice in shaping their own future.
Instead, government has played a blinder. They’ve executed their plan to perfection while so-called landlord representative organisations stood on the sidelines, offering little more than platitudes.
They should hang their heads in shame. They watched their own industry being dismantled brick by brick and still collected the fees of those they were supposed to defend.
And don’t tell me no one saw it coming. It’s a rerun — a mirror image — of the last Labour attack on landlords that led to the Rent Act 1977. The warning signs were all there. You didn’t need a think tank or a policy paper. You only needed to open Halsbury’s Statutes and read the direction of political travel.
It wasn’t rocket science.
It was common sense — and it was your job. Landlords should reflect when they’re next asked for membership fees.

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 24/10/2025 – 10:01
That’s because it’s a terrible idea!