The great rent control debate: it’s controversial, but not how you think

We need to talk about rent control. I can’t think of another aspect of housing policy which generates more rancour apart, perhaps, from planning reform.

And, closer to home, Scotland recently tried a temporary rent cap which limited rent increases for existing renters to 3 per cent. The report, which was commissioned by Labour in January 2023, included a call for a “double lock” for renters renewing their tenancies. This would mean that any rent rise is capped at either consumer price inflation or local wage growth, whichever is lower in any given area.

Cowan prefers to call his model “rent stabilisation” rather than “rent control”. And it’s important to note that what he has called for is not like the hard controls that Britain experienced after the First World War, which restricted rents to their August 1914 levels. It’s also not the hard cap that the Rent Acts of 1957 or 1965 brought in.

When I caught up with Cowan recently, he pointed out that Granger, a major housing developer and build-to-rent provider, also uses the same formula of CPI plus 1 per cent.The Office for National Statistics’ data on private rents only goes back to 2015. As a result, it’s not possible to accurately chart the impact of the rent regulation we had in Britain prior to the 80s.

Hard rent caps have been found to discourage landlords from renting out homes and reduce the supply of available housing. “Rent control can shift the power dynamic between landlords and tenants. But it is not the only solution to a housing crisis. It has to be supplemented by expanding the supply of housing – by building more affordable homes.”

One of that report’s key conclusions was that “there is a gap between practical evidence, data and monitoring of local housing markets and policy advice regarding the design and implementation of rent control.” Ultimately, Professor Gibb says that economics “isn’t the only thing that matters” when it comes to discussing whether rents should be regulated. “Politics matters too.”

The expansion of the private rented sector, at a time when more social housing is being sold and demolished than built, has had grave consequences.

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