Rental prices in the UK are spiralling out of control, especially in London where the average rent now stands at £2332 per month.  In 2016 the average rent in the capital was £1473 per month, and back in 2006 it was £357 per month.  That’s an increase of 653% in 20 years.

There are multiple causes of this, but the main one is a chronic lack of supply of affordable housing to the market in relation to demand.  The end result is tenants having to pay landlords far too much of their income to live in shoddy, overcrowded flats and houses, too scared to complain because they know there’s a queue of people behind them needing somewhere to live.

Islington Council, which recently declared a “private renting crisis” recently fined two landlords a total of £110,500 who were found to be housing 35 people in 3 2-bed flats, and this is far from unusual in a borough where rentals are higher than the average, currently £2868 per month.

Angela Rayner, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, has ruled out rent caps claiming that the recent Renters Rights Act passed last year should sort the problem out, because it restricted landlords to only one rent increase per year.  But this is nonsense.  Landlords have generally only increased rents annually and there’s still nothing stopping them loading large increases onto an annual hike.  And as Islington councillor Michael O’Sullivan has pointed out, the ban on no-fault evictions can easily be evaded by hiking rents to unaffordable levels.

And the Tories are no use either.  James Cleverly, the Party’s London Mayoral candidate, recently argued that the solution to the problem is to remove the taxes on house-builders which he claims would lead to lower house prices.  Rubbish.  Even if the taxes were removed, there is no guarantee the builders would pass the saving on at the tills in a badly overheated market.  All this would achieve is a massive shortfall in tax revenues at a time when local authorities are already stretched by the need to cover the cost of private rentals in housing benefit.

Some say that a rent freeze wouldn’t work because it would force landlords to sell up, but this is nonsense.  They are hiking rents to levels far above their profit margin because of high demand, not because of cost increases, so they could easily afford a brake on rent rises.

Will you tell Andy Burnham to put his money where his mouth is, and prove on this crucial issue that devolution to the regions is not just another empty promise? Sign the petition today and help make affordable accommodation a reality for millions of people.