Landlords wanting to back the eco movement may want to pause for thought after the Green Party today vowed to bring in an immediate rent freeze and no-fault eviction ban to tackle the housing crisis.
During an election campaign visit to Suffolk, party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay told supporters that it believed – like Labour – that councils should be handed powers to cap rents in areas where the market was overheated.
In the short term, the Greens would replicate the six-month winter rent freeze supported by the Scottish Greens in Scotland. In the longer-term, it would give councils powers to control rents in expensive areas.
Denyer said too many people were “trapped in housing unaffordable to rent, and unaffordable to heat”.
The party also wants tighter planning rules on the location of new housing, 100,000 council houses built every year to increase the supply of affordable housing funded by increasing taxes on wealth and to boost energy efficiency by requiring solar panels and heat pumps to be installed on new build homes.
Scots freeze
However, in Scotland where a rent freeze has just ended and for the next six months, rent increases in the PRS will be limited to 3%, rent controls don’t appear to be working.
Rents in the private sector rose at a faster rate than the rest of Britain, almost 5% in the 12 months to February 2023. In the six months before the legislative change, it had the lowest monthly average.
