Rent tribunal backlogs fuel rent control calls

12:10 AM, 5th November 2026, 30 minutes ago

Landlords are facing calls for nationwide rent controls as tribunal backlogs leave some waiting longer for increases that cannot be backdated to before a decision.

The London Renters Union (LRU) has told the Guardian that challenging individual increases offered insufficient protection where rents across an area were rising rapidly.

Under the Renters’ Rights Act, tribunals cannot set rents above the landlord’s proposed figure, and increases cannot be backdated to before the tribunal decision.

Jae Vail, from the LRU, said tenants were facing long delays, with some in London asked to attend hearings in the Midlands because of backlogs.

Calls for rent controls

Mr Vail told the newspaper: “The system is just clearly not doing what Labour said it would do in their manifesto, which was helping people challenge unreasonable rent increases.

“What could be a better definition of an unreasonable rent increase than 40% or 80%?”

He added: “What we’re seeing right now is a really inefficient case-by-case form of rent control.

“So why not have the version that would actually protect everyone?”

Rent tribunal backlog concerns

Chris Norris, the chief policy officer at the National Residential Landlords Association, said the government had provided no additional tribunal capacity or resources, with only just over 30 full-time judges working across the country.

He raised concerns about inaccurate decisions by an overstretched workforce, saying some judgments relied almost exclusively on searches of Rightmove or similar websites.

Oxford Renters Union has asked members to pledge to challenge rent increases at tribunal, with the aim of ‘freezing rents and lowering the market rate for all Oxford renters’.

Mr Norris described any encouragement to challenge every rent increase as an ‘abuse of the system’, but tenants’ unions said there was no evidence that renters were ‘flooding the system’.

Market rent decisions

The LRU’s analysis of tribunal data from May to October found that landlords’ proposed increases were approved in full in 36% of cases.

In one Dagenham case, a tribunal approved an 88% increase, taking the monthly rent from £1,200 to £2,250 despite the tenant’s argument that it would cause undue hardship.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “Our Renters’ Rights Act empowers tenants to challenge above-market rent increases through the tribunal – stopping private landlords from using increases as a backdoor means of eviction.

“We’re already seeing evidence that our changes are working – with cases across the country where tribunals have reduced above-market rents by hundreds of pounds a month or ruled there should be no increase.”