GREEDY landlords will be banned from setting up “bidding wars” between prospective tenants, Sir Keir Starmer vowed today.
At a campaign visit in York, the Labour chief pledged to introduce a new law protecting tenants from having to agree to extortionate prices just to secure a home.
But he stopped short of committing to rent caps.
Donning a hard hat and high vis jacket at a new housing development, Sir Keir said: “You can stop the bidding wars because what happens there is the landlord effectively goes between two or three different renters driving the rent up and up and up.
“We won’t allow them to do that.
“We will introduce a law that says you can’t do it because at the moment what happens is they sort of go back between the renters.”
The Labour leader also promised to put an end to landlords demanding excessive deposits.
And he insisted his party “will make sure rental conditions are good because we’ve heard of these terrible cases with mould and damp”.
Labour has accused the Tories of failing England’s 15 million renters by abandoning a raft of previously promised reform to the sector.
Despite pledging to ban hated section 21 no fault evictions in the 2019 Conservative manifesto – the move was abandoned.
The Tories have also been criticised for failing to get a grip of unscrupulous landlords ripping off tenants with extortionate rents and lurid living conditions.
Shadow Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has vowed to abolish no-fault evictions and put an end to fixed-term tenancies, giving tenants freedom to leave a property when it’s convinent to them rather than the landlord.
Responding to Labour’s rent plans, Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Shelter, said: “It’s good to see Labour commit to making renting fairer by tackling some of the issues that have plagued renters for years, including ridiculous requests for huge sums of rent up front.
“To make renting genuinely safer, secure, and more affordable whoever gets the keys to No. 10 must bring forward an urgent bill in the King’s Speech that scraps no fault evictions in their entirety, limits in-tenancy rent increases, and extends notice periods.”
