Andy Burnham is drawing up plans to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis – with rent controls likely to return to the spotlight after he previously championed the policy.
The move comes less than a month after he won the Makerfield by-election and launched his bid to become Labour leader and prime minister.
Should he become Prime Minister, as is widely expected on July 20 following the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer, a policy he spent years demanding – and was repeatedly refused as mayor – would finally be his to introduce nationally.
In 2023, a year before Labour’s general election victory, Burnham wrote directly to the then housing secretary, Michael Gove, demanding new powers to impose rent controls on the private rental sector in Greater Manchester.
He argued that landlords, often encouraged by letting agents, were using the cost-of-living crisis as cover to push through steep rent hikes, regardless of whether their own costs had actually risen.
Burnham asked for an immediate freeze on rents for a 12-month period, followed by a further 12-month period in which any increases could be capped at no more than the rate of inflation.
Fierce criticism from landlords
Several of the other measures he called for in that letter – including an independent inspection regime for rented homes, a tailored ‘Property Improvement Plan’ for every rented property, and stronger compulsory purchase powers for councils to acquire substandard homes – went on to be included in the Renters’ Rights Act, even though the rent control ask itself was left out.
However, as Burnham’s allies now develop a wider package of measures aimed at giving families some “breathing space” from the cost-of-living crisis, rent control is reportedly back on the table, alongside measures to bring down energy bills and a cap on bus fares.
Reports in April 2026 revealed that Burnham isn’t the only senior Labour figure to have flirted with capping rents.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves was said to be weighing a one-year freeze on private rent rises in England, as part of an emergency package designed to shield households from a cost-of-living squeeze triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting spike in oil and mortgage costs.
The proposed freeze would reportedly have exempted new-build properties, and sources suggested it was Reeves’s preferred option among several being weighed up by the Treasury – a striking shift in position, given that she had previously resisted rent controls being written into the Renters’ Rights Act.
However, the idea was quickly ruled out by No 10 following fierce criticism from landlord groups, who warned it would push landlords out of the market altogether and ultimately drive rents even higher once any freeze came to an end.
Sadiq Khan has also called for rent freeze
It is not, though, an idea without its supporters. Back in 2015, Ed Miliband – still considered the frontrunner to become Burnham’s chancellor – proposed that three-year tenancies should become the norm for private renters, with rent rises during that period capped in line with inflation.
Labour’s 2017 manifesto softened the idea slightly into a straightforward inflation cap on rent rises. Since then, Scotland has introduced its own limited system of rent controls, due to take effect next year, while Wales has considered and ultimately rejected the idea.
Sadiq Khan has been one of the most consistent voices pushing the case for rent controls in England.
As London Mayor, he has called for the power to freeze private rents in the capital since at least 2019, publishing a detailed blueprint for how a London-wide rent control system could work and repeatedly pressing both the last Conservative government and Starmer’s Labour leadership to grant City Hall the necessary powers.
Having failed to secure that authority, Khan shifted tack ahead of his 2024 re-election, instead pledging to build thousands of directly rent-controlled homes for key workers using the powers and budget he already has, alongside setting up a London Rent Commission to keep the wider rent control debate alive.
Polling commissioned around that period suggested the idea has broader appeal than is often assumed, with a clear majority of voters across party lines backing some form of maximum rent on properties.
Campaigners, including the Green Party’s London Assembly members and renters’ unions such as Acorn, have helped keep up the pressure on Khan ever since.
Other Burnham housing policies
Rent controls aside, Burnham’s nine years as mayor offer a much wider back catalogue of housing initiatives that could plausibly be scaled up nationally if he makes it to Downing Street.
The best known of these is his Good Landlord Charter, which combined grants of up to £30,000 for landlords willing to improve energy efficiency and property standards with tougher enforcement for those who didn’t.
It was a carrot-and-stick approach that helped drive a 43 per cent rise in financial penalties against rogue landlords in the region, with fines totalling £1.47 million.
Alongside the charter, Burnham funded a dedicated team of ten enforcement officers specifically tasked with tracking down poor-quality private rental housing and taking action against landlords who failed to keep it properly maintained – effectively giving the region its own private rented sector inspectorate years before anything similar existed nationally.
Another key element of his agenda was a commitment to a Housing First approach to rough sleeping, built on the principle that permanent, stable housing – rather than hostels or temporary shelters – is the most effective route out of homelessness for people with complex needs.
Piloted from 2019, the scheme has given several hundred long-term rough sleepers the keys to their own homes alongside intensive, person-centred support, and Burnham has repeatedly urged national government to adopt it as a genuine philosophy rather than treat it as a one-off project.
It sits alongside the region’s A Bed Every Night scheme, which operates across all ten Greater Manchester boroughs and provides around 400 emergency bed spaces each night for people sleeping rough or at imminent risk of doing so.
Since its launch in 2018, the programme has helped more than 3,000 people – though critics note that rough sleeping numbers, having fallen sharply in Burnham’s early years in office, have crept back up over the past four years amid funding pressures and rising asylum caseloads.
A third initiative, less discussed but potentially just as transferable, is the Greater Manchester Housing Investment Fund – a devolved, blended public-private finance vehicle that channels loans into building projects on brownfield and surplus public land.
It underpins the region’s long-term ambition to deliver 30,000 net-zero social rented homes by 2038, and represents a model for using regional financial firepower, rather than Whitehall grants alone, to get council and social housing built at scale.
Taken together, this record suggests that if Burnham does secure the Labour leadership and enter Downing Street, housing policy – and rent controls in particular – would likely move from being a source of long-running frustration for him as mayor to one of the defining tests of his premiership.
Whether a national rollout of ideas honed in Greater Manchester can survive contact with the Treasury, the property lobby, and a fractious parliamentary party remains, for now, an open question.
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