Labour MPs and renters’ rights campaigners have reacted with fury after Keir Starmer watered down his flagship plan to force landlords to provide decent homes.
The government has announced that decent homes standards – that require landlords in England to provide homes in a reasonable state of repair and be free of damp and mould – will now not be enforced until 2035, in what Labour MPs are describing as a “betrayal” of its manifesto promise.
It comes after another pledge – to scrap ground rents for leaseholders – has also been watered down, with a cap set at £250 instead.
The delay means Labour would need to win the next two general elections to oversee the implementation of the manifesto promise while in government.
Veteran Labour MP Barry Gardiner told The Independent: “This is shocking. I thought this was supposed to be the year of delivery, not having to wait a decade.”
Leeds Labour MP Richard Burgon added: “This means the decent homes standards will basically probably never happen.”
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Labour’s former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told The Independent that the delay risks indicating to voters that the party “stands for leaving children in slum accommodation”.
“I argued recently that one of the problems facing Labour was that people simply didn’t know what Labour stands for and who Labour stands for,” he said.
“From this announcement, many will decide that Labour stands for leaving children in slum accommodation and for landlords.”
The government’s decision to give landlords until 2035 to implement a decent homes standard in their properties was met with fury from campaigners and charities, who condemned it as “outrageous”.
“It’s outrageous that millions of renters are stuck paying hand over fist for often shoddy homes that pose a real danger to their health,” Sarah Elliott, Chief Executive of Shelter, said.
“Now, to add insult to injury, renters are being asked to wait almost an entire decade for the basic protection of a decent home.
She added: “Let’s be clear, renters simply can’t wait this long for decent homes. Building on the vital changes in the Renters’ Rights Act, the government must ensure renters’ homes are safe to live in now, not in 2035, while supporting councils to bring rule-breakers to book by properly funding local authority enforcement teams.”
Labour MP Olivia Blake said: “Renters – as a minimum – should expect the homes they live in to be fit for human habitation. The Renters’ Rights Act is a landmark piece of legislation which rightly addresses the power imbalance between landlords and tenants, and I was proud to support it. Leaving millions of renters in this postion for a further decade not only let’s landlords off the hook, but isn’t the ambition Labour should be aspiring to.”
Generation Rent said: “The government has today announced that many private renters will have to wait a DECADE before their landlords will be forced to make sure their home is decent.”
The campaign group’s chief executive Ben Twomey added: “It is absurd to let landlords drag their feet for an entire decade, denying renters the most basic standards in our homes.
“It will mean millions of renters, including children, trapped in poor-quality homes with nowhere to turn.”
The government issued a response to its consultation on the decent homes standard on Wednesday, with the minister for housing and planning, Matthew Pennycook, saying “social and private landlords should act as quickly as possible to ensure their properties are decent”.
However, he added that the government recognises the “significant challenges that landlords are facing” as a result of the changes and said: “As such, we have decided that all rented properties will be required to meet the new DHS by 2035 at the latest – an implementation timeline that gives social landlords in particular the time and the certainty they need to boost housing supply as well as drive up the quality of the homes they manage.”
The watered-down reforms come after The Independent reported last year that some 83 MPs earn a minimum of £10,000 from renting properties, with Labour leading the pack of mostly residential landlords.
Labour was warned that the government won’t be trusted on renters’ rights after it emerged that MPs rake in at least £830,000 a year in rent.
Campaigners said the number of landlords in parliament was “shocking” and called for greater scrutiny over what they described as a “blatant conflict of interest” when voting on legislation that would directly affect them.
High-profile ministerial landlords include chancellor Rachel Reeves and foreign secretary David Lammy. Ms Reeves moved to Downing Street following her new role in government.
