Sadiq Khan calls for rent control powers to help cash-strapped tenants in London

Mayor demands extra authority to overhaul private rental sector to make it ‘fit for purpose’

Sadiq Khan has called for powers to control rents in the capital as part of an overhaul that would give tenants more rights and aim to bring down prices in the private rental market.

The London mayor wants tenants to be among the board members of a new private-rent commission that will help design, implement, monitor and enforce the new approach which he said would “fundamentally rebalance” London’s private rented sector and make it “fit for purpose”.

In a report published on Friday, Mr Khan, laid out plans to establish a universal register of landlords to help enforce standards. He also wants new powers to allow him to introduce a temporary cap on rents while the commission is doing its work to establish a longer-term system.

Polls suggest that around two-thirds of Londoners favour rent controls which are in place in cities such as Berlin and New York.

“It is high time for private renting in London to be transformed. Londoners need fundamental change that is long overdue,” Mr Khan said.

“Unlike other mayors around the world, I have no powers over the private rented sector. That’s why this landmark report sets out a detailed blueprint of what the government must do to overhaul tenancy laws, and what powers City Hall needs from them to bring rents down.”

The proportion of people renting from private landlords in the capital has risen from 11 per cent in 1990 to 26 per cent last year.

Research published last week by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that private rents are now unaffordable for workers on the median wage in London, the southeast, southwest and east of England, effectively pricing out many key workers such as nurses and primary school teachers.

The problem is particularly acute in London where rents take up 42 per cent of the average pre-tax wage. Separate research by housing charity Shelter found that rents in several London boroughs are among the least affordable anywhere in the UK.

Kensington and Chelsea is the least affordable borough, with average rents equivalent to 127 per cent of a low-earning family’s pay, followed by Westminster at 111 per cent and Camden at 92 per cent. Lower-income working families in two-thirds of England need to spend more than 30 per cent of their income to rent a two-bed home.

The mayor’s plans require a new bill to be approved by parliament handing him extra powers. Any new legislation is likely to come up against stiff resistance from the government which has previously stated its opposition to rent controls.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the government had already taken “unprecedented action to transform the private rental market and protect the millions of tenants who live in rented accommodation”.

Rent controls are controversial with some studies showing that in certain forms they can benefit particular groups over others.

A 2017 paper by researchers at Stanford University found that rent controls introduced in San Francisco led to some landlords converting their properties into expensive apartments because these were classed as new builds which were exempt from the rules.

The study found that the amount saved by people in rent-controlled properties was roughly cancelled out by more expensive rents for tenants in non-rent-controlled homes.

Mr Khan’s report proposes additional measures, some of which the government has already said it wants to introduce, including introducing open-ended tenancies, and ending no-fault evictions. The mayor also says he wants to scrap break clauses and improve dispute resolution services for landlords and tenants.