Roger Jarman says the Renters’ Rights Act is a step in the right direction but nothing more
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (RRA) is a significant piece of legislation which will have ramifications throughout the housing sector. Abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions, moving to periodic tenancies and tightening rules on rent increases are real gains for tenants long exposed to insecurity and arbitrary power. The Act deserves support but it in no way solves the country’s housing crisis. It modestly rebalances an unequal relationship while leaving intact a system in which homes are treated primarily as assets rather than places to live.
The crisis is structural, and partially addressing the inequities in the private rented sector (PRS) only goes so far. For decades, governments have deregulated housing, sold off council homes, slashed public housebuilding programmes and encouraged property speculation. The result is a system organised around extraction: tenants hand over large shares of their wages to private owners, with landlords now controlling access to one-fifth of housing in England. Only 30 years ago, the PRS represented just 10% of the housing stock.
Landlords, capital and the myth of a market in retreat
Whenever reform of any kind is proposed, parts of the property industry warn of a landlord exodus. The evidence is more mixed. Private renting has remained broadly stable over the past decade, and investment still flows into residential property. What we are seeing is less the collapse of landlordism than its reorganisation. Smaller landlords may leave, but properties are often bought by other landlords or larger company structures better placed to use tax advantages and economies of scale. This is not the end of private renting, but its consolidation in more corporate hands.
If some homes leave the sector and are bought by first-time buyers, councils or housing associations, that could be seen as social progress. The danger is that landlords instead shift homes into short-term holiday lets or higher yield uses such as poorly regulated HMOs. That highlights the limits of piecemeal reform. If capital can move easily between profitable housing uses, regulation in one part of the market will be undermined unless the state controls the wider system of property speculation through stronger planning, licensing and democratic oversight.
Affordability and class power
The Act may improve security, but it does little for affordability. Limiting rent increases to once a year and allowing tenants to challenge unreasonable rises are worthwhile, but defensive. They may slow the extraction without addressing the deeper truth that rents are already too high. In England, private renters spend on average more than 36% of their income on rent; in London, the figure is around 42%. That is not a healthy housing system but a large-scale transfer of income from labour to property ownership.
Here, a socialist approach parts company with liberal reformism. If housing is a social good, rents cannot be left to the market. Rent controls or rent stabilisation are not extreme; they are democratic responses to failure. The claim that rent regulation distorts supply assumes the current system is neutral and efficient. It is neither. It reflects asset inequality, land scarcity, weak tenant bargaining power and decades of policy choices that protected owners while exposing renters to significant insecurity. Progressives should argue not only for limits on annual increases but for rents more closely linked to wages and stronger public intervention.
Affordability also depends on the supply of the right kind. The answer is not simply more homes in the abstract or more incentives for private developers. What is needed is a new generation of genuinely social housing: council homes built at scale, let at social rent, insulated from speculation and held as permanent public assets. Without that alternative, private landlords will still retain structural power over working-class households.
Enforcement, austerity and the limits of paper rights
Rights on paper do not automatically ensure real power shifts from landlords to their tenants. The state has announced £60 million for councils to assist with the implementation of the RRA. And councils can now levy fines of up to £40,000 for serious breaches. Those measures are welcome. But years of austerity have left local authorities overstretched and unevenly resourced. In that context, stronger rights may still be weakly enforced, especially where tenants are poorly organised and councils are underfunded.
The same problem is evident in the courts and tribunals. Ministers promise investment and digitisation, but delays still threaten justice – for both tenants and landlords. This is not just a technical problem but part of a wider pattern: public systems have been hollowed out while private property rights, overall, remain strongly protected.
So, what will the RRA achieve? It should reduce some of the worst injustices in the PRS. More tenants will gain protection from arbitrary eviction and a better chance to challenge poor practice. Those are real improvements and should be defended. But we must not confuse reform with resolution. The Act does not end rent extraction, socialise land, rebuild public housing or remove homes from a speculative housing market. It improves the terms on which working people are exploited in the housing market; it does not abolish that exploitation.
The next stage of housing politics must be more ambitious: rent controls, mass council housebuilding, stronger planning and licensing powers, tighter regulation of holiday lets and HMOs, better-funded councils and courts, and support for collective tenant organisations. Above all, it should be guided by a simple principle: housing is a human need, not a vehicle for private accumulation. The Act is a step forward, but that’s all.