Islington Council has declared the borough is in a state of “private renting crisis” as it called on the Government to empower the council to impose rent controls.
By Josef Steen, Local Democracy Reporter
Islington Council has declared the borough is in a state of “private renting crisis” as it called on the Government to empower the council to impose rent controls.
A majority of councillors voted on Thursday, September 24 to commit the North London borough to lobby the Mayor of London and the Secretary of State for Housing for powers to introduce “long-term rent controls” and to introduce an emergency rent freeze in the borough.
The borough’s housing chief, Cllr Jason Jackson, said unaffordable rentals meant people were “coming through [the council’s] doors” for homelessness support or temporary accommodation.
Islington consistently ranks among the most expensive London boroughs for renting. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) put the average private rent in August 2026 at £2,868, an annual increase of 6.2 per cent.
Cllr Michael O’Sullivan (Labour) added: “Ordinary people cannot live in Islington unless they live in conditions that are slum-like and very, very overcrowded.”
He warned that “rogue landlords” were now trying to evade the recent abolition of Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions by hiking rents to force tenants out by other means, including for “revenge”.
“Rent caps are the solution to this. We had this before, and it’s about time to reintroduce it,” he said.
Independent rent officers were once able to set maximum “fair rents” for properties, until the Conservative Government led by Margaret Thatcher abolished this under the Housing Act 1988.
The English Housing Survey from 2023/24 found that private renters spent the highest proportion of their income on housing (34 per cent).
Renting in Islington
The conduct of “rogue landlords” in Islington has repeatedly hit the headlines in recent years, particularly where the council has fined property owners for renting out overcrowded flats, failing to sort damp and mould, and unlawful or substandard lets. In 2020, the borough fined two landlords a total of £110,500 after officers discovered 35 people were living across three two-bed flats.
Property tribunals have repeatedly seen landlords fined for letting out unlicensed Homes in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), resulting in them repaying tenants several thousand pounds in rent.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) last year reported on one private tenant in Islington, Bill Mitton, who was served a Section 21 eviction notice – prior to the Government banning them – amid significant disrepair in his flat. He claimed he was being forced to pump out sewage water every day due to a leaking pipe beneath the panels, adding that the constant exposure was making him sick.
At the time, Mr Mitton said it had been a “battle” to get the building owner to act, and amid the ongoing disrepair he appealed to Islington Council’s Environmental Health team to enforce the repairs, even as the council issued improvement notices to the landlord. The landlord, however, told the LDRS he was trying to evict Bill so he could carry out complex repairs and refurbishment, and blamed the slow progress on the contractors and previous “unauthorised” works.
Mr Mitton told the LDRS he understood why the council declared a private renting crisis but cautioned that rent controls should be designed “very carefully”.
“I’d like to see the whole problem addressed: rent levels, the supply of housing and social housing, empty properties, standards in rented accommodation, and the genuine costs faced by landlords, rather than treating rent controls alone as the complete answer,” he said.
Lobbying vs change
The neighbouring Hackney Council passed a similar motion in 2025 calling on the Government to give local authorities like itself rent control powers, which Labour councillors deemed “common sense” and denied they were a “radical experiment”. The council has not published any response it received from the Government.
Brighton and Hove, Oxford City and Worcester City councils have also passed similar resolutions. But the Government has repeatedly refused to introduce controls.
In July, the Secretary of State for Housing, Angela Rayner, ruled out introducing rent caps, stating that the Renters Rights Act had already given renters “more power and control”. The 2025 Act, which took effect on May 1 2026, abolished no-fault evictions and fixed-term tenancies, capped rent increases to once per year, and limited the amount landlords can demand in rent up-front to one-month.
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has previously called for the Government to devolve rent control powers to his office, but the Government in June said it had “no plans” to do so.
What are rent controls – and do they work?
Rent controls are where the government sets legal limits on how much landlords can charge for rent, or how much they can hike it by each year.
The policy is a contentious political issue, with most parties in Britain arguing they would not work in practice. The Green Party and Plaid Cymru in Wales, however, argue for rent controls to make housing more affordable
Yes
- The Autonomy Institute says returning to pre-1989 rent controls is “not an option”, but freezing rents at 2027 cash levels could save tenants across England £14.5billion overall over four years
- The think tank suggested capping rent increases for ongoing tenancies strictly in line with Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, while limiting the amount private landlords can hike rents between tenancies by CPI + 2%
- To prevent landlords making unsustainable losses, the institute said other measures should be used alongside caps – such as letting them deduct mortgage interest from their gross taxable rental income
No
- The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says countries such as Ireland, Germany and the United States and others demonstrate that rent controls are costly and inefficient
- In August 2026 the research institute said “empirical” evidence shows that the policy leads to private landlords either leaving the market or trying to recover lost returns by other means
- The IFS pointed to one study of Oslo, Norway, where private landlords demanded deposits “10 or 20 times the monthly rent” from tenants to bypass price rent caps, a practice which all but disappeared after controls were phased out in 1982
