The Rundown Podcast: Fixing The Broken Rental Market

3 min read4 hr

This week on The Rundown, the panel takes a look at the government’s plan to try and fix the UK’s rental market, as soaring rents, terrifying competition, no fault evictions, poorly maintained properties and huge supply pressures trap an increasingly large cohort of tenants in a system that means they may never own their own homes.

After years of gestation under the Conservatives that ultimately failed to become law, a bill to improve renters' rights looks likely to make it onto the statute book this summer, potentially ending fixed-term tenancies, no-fault evictions and improving accommodation standards.

To discuss whether the Renters Rights Bill will go far enough, what other policies are needed to help fix the sector, and what impact it will have on the growing class of professional landlords, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by Joe Powell, Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater, who sits on the Commons housing select committee, as well as by Roisin Lanigan, journalist and author, whose debut novel ‘I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There’ has been billed as a “gothic novel for generation rent”.

Alongside them are Tom Darling, director of the Renters' Reform Coalition, a group of 21 housing organisations campaigning for stronger renters' rights, Charlie Trew, head of policy at the housing charity Shelter, and Chris Norris, director of policy and campaigns at the National Residential Landlords Association.

Prices have soared in recent years for renters with competition for housing reaching record levels, as Trew explained that “private renting just isn't really fit for purpose right now”.

He said the sector has doubled in size in the last 20 years as fewer people are able to purchase property, with many more people expected to “spend their whole lives renting”, with all the insecurity that brings.

Trew said there is a “huge power imbalance” between tenants and landlords, and the current system is “a major trigger of homelessness”, saying the reforms could “fundamentally change the entire system”, but only if they are in concert with a huge increase in housebuilding, targeted towards social rented homes.

Powell agreed, saying that a huge amount of the casework he has received since entering Parliament last year has been housing-related, adding: “If you want to look at this as a big picture, we have to address the type of housing we build.”

He said: “One thing I'm looking for from the government is a big slug of money in the comprehensive spending review next month to boost affordable house building.

“Because I don't think you can do it at the numbers that Charlie wants without a significant grant element.”

It was terrible experiences trying to rent property in London that led Lanigan to write her new novel, explaining: “Thehe reason I chose to make it a horror is because it is a horror story when you rent, the private rental market is horrifying, and I wanted to write about how we just accept all of those horrifying things like the damp, the mould, the opacity of the system.

“The fact that often you're dealing with these shadowy, ghostly figures, you don't really know who your landlord is.”

She said the whole experience “all feels fairly uncanny’, and the book is about the impact that this has on people’s mental health, on their relationships, adding: “We stay in relationships that are unhappy or perhaps dangerous because you're not able to access a better living situation.

“Those kinds of things were all things I wanted to touch on, and I kept finding real-life examples that were as horrifying as anything I could invent.”

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot