A single mum whose rent was raised by 20% with just one month’s notice is set to deliver her 56,000-signature Change.org petition to 10 Downing Street to call for a cap on how much landlords can raise tenants’ rent by.
Bridget Chapman and Generation Rent will deliver the petition to 10 Downing Street at 2:30pm on Tuesday 8th July.
Chapman launched the petition, backed by renters’ rights group Generation Rent, after her landlord increased the rent on her County Durham home by £100 — a hike that left her struggling financially.
She said: “As a single parent living with my two children, with one income to live on, the impact will ripple through my life. I feel broken down by this system. Extreme damp in my previous home led to me being rushed to hospital with pneumonia. I hoped this new home would be better, but once again, I’ve suffered a huge blow to my security. Rents in my local area are high, and I cannot simply jump to another more affordable option… I was already struggling to cover my essentials; this shock rent rise will put even more of a strain on me.”
Generation Rent’s winter 2024 survey found that 61% of renters reported that their landlord had asked them to pay a higher rent in the past 12 months while almost a quarter (24%) reported an increase over £100. This compares to just 9% reporting hikes of this size in July 2022, almost a threefold increase. Meanwhile, the 2024 English Private Landlord survey found one in five landlords hiked rent by 15% or more the last time they renewed or extended a tenancy.
Generation Rent commented: “The most common reason that renters reported they had been given for their rent increases, was not because their landlord faced increased costs, or was struggling more, it was simply because of the rising rewards of ‘the market’. Almost a third (31%) of landlords had blamed higher market rents, while a further 7% stated that the increase was because of letting agent advice. This is indefensible. Private landlords should not be able to raise the rent higher than inflation or wages. The Government can and must act to change this.”
This issue here is not landlords the issue is government and government policy. Hello GR, welcome to the issue you had a hand in creating!
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Another headline blaming landlords for the housing crisis. This time, it’s a petition from a single mum who faces a 20% rent hike, delivering 56,000 signatures to 10 Downing Street, calling for rent caps. It’s a compelling story—and understandably, it tugs at the public’s emotions. But stop and take a deeper look.
Because this isn’t a “greedy landlord vs struggling tenant” drama.
It’s a multi-decade failure of government policy, irresponsible borrowing, central bank mismanagement, and a housing system pushed to breaking point by ideological and fiscal short-termism. And until we address those deeper causes, no amount of rent control will fix the problem.
The Inflation Nobody Talks About: Government Borrowing and Central Bank Collusion
Let’s start with the basics: why are rents rising?
The simplistic answer is “because landlords can.” But in truth, rents are rising because the entire economy is drowning in inflationary debt—and the biggest driver of all has been government debt and central bank policy.
Over the last two decades, Labour, Coalition, Conservative—it doesn’t matter—every UK government has racked up unsustainable levels of borrowing to fund political vanity projects, poorly targeted welfare expansions, and bloated bureaucracies. This wasn’t just during crises like 2008 or Covid. Even in years of growth, spending outpaced tax revenue. The UK’s national debt now stands at over £2.7 trillion, and the government continues to run deficits every year.
How has this been financed? With cheap money from the Bank of England, enabled by quantitative easing (QE) and ultra-low interest rates.
In other words, the government printed hundreds of billions of pounds and pushed it into the financial system, creating an asset boom and flooding the economy with liquidity. But the real-world result?
House prices skyrocketed.
Rents followed suit.
Landlords, tenants, and buyers alike were forced to operate in a market that was rigged and overinflated.
And when inflation came home to roost—triggered in part by this reckless monetary expansion—the Bank of England had no choice but to slam on the brakes, raising interest rates. That’s hammered homeowners, landlords with mortgages, and ultimately, renters. Everyone ends up as collateral damage, and often the people who need the most support and help.
This isn’t a landlord problem. It’s a systemic economic failure.
20 Years of Housing Failure: A Bipartisan Catastrophe
Every government of the last 20 years bears responsibility:
Labour (1997–2010) allowed mass immigration without matching it with housebuilding, inflated demand through tax credits, and sold off social housing stock without replenishing it.
The Coalition (2010–2015) pushed austerity at the local level, gutting planning departments and hindering the ability to build new homes.
Conservatives (2015–2024) pandered to NIMBYs, froze housing reform, and ran the economy on the fumes of artificially low interest rates while simultaneously throttling small landlords with endless regulations and tax grabs
(Section 24, anyone?).
The result is a perfect storm: a nation that won’t build, can’t plan, and is utterly addicted to DEBT.
We now have:
A crippled planning system.
A broken rental market.
A hostile tax environment for private landlords.
A public sector too broke to build social housing.
And somehow… landlords are the ones getting blamed?
The Myth of the “Greedy Landlord”
Let’s challenge another lazy narrative: that landlords are hiking rents just for sport.
What’s actually happening is this:
Mortgage costs have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled for landlords with variable or expiring fixed-rate loans.
Insurance, compliance, and repairs have all become more expensive, driven by inflation and regulatory pressure.
The tax regime penalises landlords, especially those with mortgages, making many investments loss-making unless rents go up.
So when rent rises by £100, it’s often not profit—it’s survival.
Yes, there are bad landlords. But the majority are not wealthy oligarchs. They’re retirees, small-time investors, or accidental landlords who are now being scapegoated for problems they didn’t create.
Rent Control Is a Dangerous Distraction
The petition calls for rent caps linked to inflation or wages. But here’s what that would actually do:
Reduce the number of available rental properties. –(higher rent)
Discourage investment in property upgrades. (Higher rent)
Force small landlords out of the market, consolidating power in the hands of large corporate landlords. (Higher rent)
It’s already happening. Many landlords are selling up. Fewer properties on the market means more demand per property, pushing rents up even further.
Rent control possibly treats the symptom for a tenant, but moves the problem to the Landlord another cycle begins… The real cure is building homes, reforming planning, and restoring fiscal sanity, which is Something we haven’t seen for so long it would be hard to recognise.
What Needs to Happen
Cut government spending to reduce inflationary pressure at the source.
Lets have few focus groups costing millions to tell us how to save thousands, that’s always a favourite.
Scrap the broken planning system and create incentives for councils to say “yes” to development.
Reform the tax treatment of rental income so it’s fair, transparent, and sustainable.
Rebuild trust in the financial system—end QE, restore accountability at the Bank of England, and tie interest rates to real productivity, not political expediency.
Stop demonising landlords, and instead encourage professionalism and long-termism in the sector.
Final Thought: It’s the System That’s Broken—Not the Landlord
It’s easy to get angry when rents go up. It’s easy to sign a petition. But until we look at the bigger picture—government debt, inflation, planning failure, and housing policy—we’ll just keep treating the symptoms, not the disease.
So to every voter, tenant, landlord, and policymaker: stop blaming each other.
Start blaming Westminster. They earned it.
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Eloquently and accurately put, but Bridget Chapman and Generation Rant will neither listen nor understand.
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Spot on…
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Rent controls, a brilliant idea as far as many landlords are concerned. Thousands of us rent well under the local average especially because we value good tenants. If rent controls were introduced I could increase my rents by £200 per month because I rent well under the local average and not one tenant could complain or accuse me of increasing rents unreasonably….bring it on, my conscience will be clear. Every time rent controls are introduced rents increase. My does the Gov. listen to Shelter and Generation rent who house no one?
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