On 1 May, Labour's Renters' Rights Act takes effect. The press releases promised tenants more security, fairer rents, and an end to bad landlords. The reality, already visible to anyone in the rental market, is the opposite. Letting agents are reporting record numbers of landlords serving notice, putting properties up for sale, and walking away from the market entirely. Industry estimates suggest more than 200,000 homes could disappear from the rental sector in 2026 alone.
Good Intentions, Predictable Consequences
Nobody in Parliament wants tenants to be exploited. Nobody disputes that some rogue landlords behave badly. But it does not follow that loading every small landlord with new costs, new risks and new restrictions is the right answer. If you make supplying a service harder and riskier, you get less of that service. This is not ideology — it is arithmetic.
The Act tightens repossession rules, restricts how rents can be reviewed, and creates new categories of tenant rights that landlords must navigate. For a large institutional landlord with a legal team, this is annoying. For the retired teacher who rents out the flat she inherited, it is the moment she sells up.
Rents Are Already Rising
The numbers tell the story. Annual rental growth across the UK in February ran at 2.0%, with the North East at 4.4% and the North West at 3.3%. With supply about to be hit by the largest legislative shock in a generation, those numbers will only climb. Demand is strong, supply is shrinking, and basic economics will do the rest.
Tenants in Preston, in Manchester, in every northern town tell me the same thing — there are fewer properties available, the queues to view them are longer, and landlords can effectively pick whoever they want from a stack of applications. Renters' rights mean very little when there is nothing left to rent.
Who Wins?
The big winners from this Act are the corporate build-to-rent developers who have the scale and the lawyers to absorb the new compliance burden. They will gradually consolidate the market, hoover up properties from departing small landlords, and re-let them at higher prices. Labour has, perhaps unintentionally, designed a policy that crushes the small landlord while protecting the big institutional one.
The losers are obvious. They are the young couple looking for their first flat in a regional city. They are the family relocating for a job. They are the single parent who needs flexibility. None of these people benefit from a smaller rental market with higher prices. All of them have been told this Act was for their benefit.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK believes the right answer to a housing shortage is to build more homes — not to drive private suppliers out of the market. We would scrap the punitive sections of the Renters' Rights Act, simplify possession rules so honest landlords can act when tenants seriously breach contracts, and target genuine criminal landlords with proper enforcement rather than burying decent ones in paperwork.
We would also tackle the demand side. Net migration at recent levels is incompatible with affordable rents. You cannot welcome record numbers of new arrivals every year and then act surprised when there are not enough flats to go round. Labour talks about renters' rights. Reform UK would deliver renters' homes.