Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of introducing rent controls in the private rental sector.

The Government does not support rent controls to set the level of rent at the outset of a private rented tenancy. Evidence suggests that this would discourage investment in the sector and lead to declining property standards as a result, which helps neither landlords, nor tenants. Recent international examples also suggest that rent controls can have an inadvertent negative impact on the supply of housing and may encourage more illegal subletting.