Protecting people from unaffordable rents requires that all landlords should become registered as social landlords with strict rent controls. The term ‘social landlord’, should be re-defined with new clear responsibilities and rights set out which local councils should be resourced to enforce when necessary. This is part of a wider argument against the idea of a dominant housing market which does not meet actual housing need. Oxford is a case in point.
How do we move from having private landlords to fully-regulated, registered social landlords?
The registration of all landlords as ‘social landlords’ with strict rent controls and more protection for tenants would go to meet actual housing need rather than serve the interests of private landlords. Do we need private landlords, given substantial rents and increases often above inflation in recent years? Rent levels are making renting unaffordable, increasing homelessness, and may cause even more use of temporary accommodation. If we don’t need private landlords, what can be done?
New regulations including rent controls, arguably in a 15-year transition to ensure social and environmental needs are met in sustainable retrofitted existing homes and other buildings, are in order. We have to start by considering definitions.
Defining social housing and registered providers
The Regulator of Social Housing maintains a register of social housing providers and has powers of inspection. The Regulator defines social housing and registered providers as follows:
“Social housing includes low-cost rental (such as affordable rent properties) and low-cost ownership (such as shared ownership). Registered providers of social housing include local authority landlords and private registered providers such as not-for-profit housing associations, co-operatives and for-profit organisations.”
These definitions raise questions. Low-cost or affordable rents should have a basis in local average incomes e.g. a maximum rent could be set at 30% of average household income, then adjusted down to 25% and kept there for the future. How a social landlord can be a for-profit organisation taking profits out of the housing sector is questionable. Exclusion from being registered social landlords (RSLs) should apply, unless the organisation concerned becomes non-profit. At present, such RSLs are generally charities, businesses, housing associations or local councils.
Carrots, not just sticks for registered social housing providers
Government needs to consider how grants, low-interest loans and use of charitable status for all RSLs might be applicable in a 15-year transition. These are about tenants too, as some RSLs might sell up at the thought of doing sustainable retrofits on properties they own.
Why we do not need private rented homes in principle is apparent from available evidence.
Condition of private rented homes in recent years
Mark Stephens notes the link between insecure assured shorthold tenancies occurring since 1989, the rise of private rentals to about a fifth of homes, and the increase of possession claims since Covid. In the year to March 2024, private landlords made 30,000 possession claims. This underlines the need to reduce private rental properties and to re-introduce secure tenancies.
In the last three years, up to December 2024, private tenants have experienced massive rent rises. New let costs have risen 27% for tenants, in a period of 19% growth in average earnings. Such impacts are hard to bear when about.30% of tenants have full or partial payment of rent via the Universal Credit system. The Government Renters Rights Bill does not have measures likely to lead to lower rents in practice, and rent controls are not being considered. About two-thirds of working private tenants are finding it hard to pay rent, according to a Shelter report. This is despite recent evidence that about 23% of private rented accommodation does not meet decent home standards.
Meeting actual housing need?
Private landlords periodically threaten to leave the sector, when faced with better regulation, but the English Housing Survey suggests the private rented sector has been of similar size in recent years. About 4.7 million households are in private rental properties, about a fifth of homes. We should, however, note that there is rising demand (see below). It is pertinent that demand for very low-cost housing is not being met. Average home prices in England are, essentially, for the rich. Specifically, home prices have been increasing at twice the rate of household incomes since at least 1999.
An average home in England is 18.2 times the average income of the lowest 10% of households. It is implausible that simply building more homes at current prices will close this gap. Consequently, rising private sector rental demand is to be expected when other options such as council homes, keyworker homes, housing cooperatives, Community Land Trust initiatives and Housing Association vacancies are limited and/or difficult to access because of long-term under-funding, low incomes in the bottom fifth of income groups, etc.
Availability of homes at acceptable rents?
Availability of homes at acceptable rents is so low that about one-fifth of the 24-34 age group are still living with their parents. Homes which are safe and provide decent accommodation also matter. The prior signals of a lack of sufficient regard for the residents of high-rise blocks finally became a source of government action after the 2017 Grenfell fire, as Stuart Hodkinson has recorded. His book shows that post-Grenfell, investigation revealed other blocks with safety problems, notably in the private rented sector. Hodkinson favours re-regulating the building and landlord sectors and improving accountability to tenants.
Housing from the existing empty built environment
How many additional units of very low-cost housing are needed is difficult to estimate without reliable figures of what housing may be obtained from the totality of the existing empty built environment. Stephens, Gibb and Perry note that demolitions reduce housing stock each year. An estimate for new homes needed at social rent in England is 90,000 extra units per year, or 100,000 for Britain as a whole. Units required for shared ownership and ‘intermediate rent’ are additional to these figures.
How is Oxford doing in the crisis of private tenancies?
A case for bringing an end to private landlordism can be partially made by reference to places with concentrations of private rented accommodation. One does not have to simply be Against Landlords, as author Nick Bano has suggested. However, the more one examines evidence about private landlords, the less enthusiastic any reasonable person may become.
Oxford is expensive and unaffordable for many people
An extensive summary of housing policy and conditions in Oxford has been provided in a week of articles by the Oxford Clarion. How expensive is Oxford for housing? Well, pretty awful. Average home price in Oxford is now c.£571,000, far more than the average price across SE England of £382,000; average monthly rent £1,778; first time buyers were averaging £433,000 for a home. In practice, this means average house prices over 12 times household earnings and private rents more than 50% higher than for England as a whole.
Repeated claims are made in local media and online fora that essential workers such as nurses and teachers leave Oxford not long after training, in order that their starting salaries will go further in cheaper places. Whilst hospitals have built accommodation to help retain some groups of workers, this does not appear to have ensured avoiding skills shortages.
Housing quality … not guaranteed
An investigation suggested about a fifth of private rented homes in Oxford (c.6,200) were not decent accommodation in 2020. Prosecutions of private landlords are, however, rare, according to The Rent Trap. Oxford City Council lacks the resources to do regular internal inspections of such properties which make up over 49% of homes in Oxford. Furthermore, there are an additional 4,000 from other RSLs. About 3,000 households are on the council waiting list with increasing homelessness.
Large developments add more council homes but not enough
Surely, large scale developments taking place in Oxford and environs would mean more resources could be obtained for low-cost housing? Yes and no. When this opportunity arose with massive expansion of the Westgate Shopping Centre, the hope of some additional council homes was not approved by Oxford City Council and only luxury flats were built.
Colenutt’s short case study of Oxford North showed that attempts to minimise council housing within this development outside Oxford relied on statements by advisors that ignored the actual scale of profit involved. The viability of meeting the City Council’s target of 50% council homes in such an area was quite reasonable after all, as the local Civic Society and others pointed out. This contrasts with Council action more recently at Barton Park, where 354 council homes are being acquired in a large housing development.
Concluding thoughts
If those in need of homes did not face Oxford’s house prices or astronomical private rents, then more of their household income could go into savings and into spending in the local economy. The idea of housing as a market activity should be questioned. Private landlords in Oxford, after all, buy new homes to rent them out which inflates demand and causes market prices for house purchase in the city to remain very high indeed.
Oxford needs to be able to house the people to address its skills shortages. The ability to offer more council homes by buying homes on sale in Oxford would therefore be desirable, to reduce the proportion of the market homes in the city. Similarly, part-rent/part-buy homes can be bought, and empty homes and 2nd homes could be subject to compulsory purchase orders.
If this is good for Oxford, and those in housing need here, then national policies to make de-marketisation of housing easier for local councils should be implemented throughout England. RSLs, meeting demand from those not yet ready to buy, or not expecting to settle in Oxford, will have a niche of practical use, but one likely to be far smaller than at present.
This is the first in a series on the broken housing market. Part 2 raises the issue of having a housing market at all if society intends that decent housing should be a right, not a privilege of circumstances.
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