Angela Rayner rules out rent controls and admits 1.5m homes goal ‘challenging’

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has announced that the government are “not looking at rent controls at the moment.”

Aneisha Beveridge, research director at Connells Group, said: “We welcome the Government’s decision not to pursue rent controls. Scotland’s experience has given policymakers the opportunity to see the longer-term consequences of these measures in practice. While controls can offer short-term relief for existing tenants, they do little to make renting more affordable in the long term. The size of the average rent increase in Scotland today remains 40 per cent higher than in England.

“But it’s the longer-term impact of rent controls which tends to be most damaging given they exacerbate the underlying shortage of homes and reduce the incentive to invest in new rental supply. At the end of the Scottish rent freeze in 2023, there were 39 per cent fewer homes on the rental market compared to a 16 per cent rise in England. Ultimately, the most sustainable way to bring down rents is to build more homes.”