Rent freezes are back in the news. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has confirmed the government won’t be introducing rent controls in England, despite Prime Minister Andy Burnham having called for exactly that back in 2023, when he was Mayor of Greater Manchester and the cost of living crisis was at its peak. Her view is that the Renters’ Rights Act, rather than a freeze or cap, is already doing the job of protecting tenants.
Not everyone agrees. The Green Party, London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have all pushed for rent controls, arguing they’re the single biggest lever available to ease living costs. Landlord groups and the Conservatives take the opposite view, warning that caps push landlords out of the market and shrink supply for the renters they’re meant to help.
Scotland is often cited by both sides. Emergency rent controls ran there from 2022 to 2024, and a longer-term framework now allows local authorities to designate “Rent Pressure Zones” from 2026, capping rises at inflation plus one percentage point, up to 6%. Supporters call it evidence-based progress. Critics point to ONS figures showing Scottish rents rose faster than England’s over the same period. Both numbers are real, they just get read differently depending on where you stand, and that’s not a debate we’re going to referee here.
While the freeze debate rumbles on, the Renters’ Rights Act has quietly been reshaping the private rented sector since May 2026. Section 21 evictions are gone, tenancies have gone periodic, and rental bidding and “No DSS” adverts are banned. None of this yet applies to social housing, but that grace period ends in 2027, when the same reforms extend into the social rented sector, giving providers less time than it feels like to prepare.
Here’s the practical thread underneath all of it. Harder eviction routes mean fewer voids arriving in the first place, so when one does come up, there’s more pressure to re-let it fast. One London borough recently reported completing sheltered housing voids in under 14 days on average, while separate figures put typical void costs at around £8,590 in works alone, plus £438 to £547 in lost rent. Getting utilities connected and meters read quickly is a small but common source of delay in that process, and one of the few parts of it a provider or agent can control directly.
None of the political debate is going away soon, and rightly so. But while rent freezes and rent controls stay in Westminster’s hands, void turnaround times stay in yours, and tightening them up now is the more useful place to spend the energy.
If utilities and metering are one of the places that time tends to slip in your void process, get in touch, we spend most of our days helping providers and agents close exactly that gap.
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