‘What might Andy Burnham’s approach to improving renting look like?’

We know that tackling the housing crisis is one of Andy Burnham’s top priorities. He made a pledge to end rough sleeping on the steps of 10 Downing Street, and with Angela Rayner back in charge at MHCLG, we can be sure that building new homes and raising housing standards will retain a high profile under Burnham’s administration.

Rightly, Burnham and Rayner have put a lot of emphasis on building new council homes. But there is also a recognition that raising standards and improving affordability in existing homes is much-needed, especially within the private rented sector.

I’ve seen this need grow and grow in the three years since I was elected as a councillor in Stockport in Greater Manchester, with the number of households on the housing register tripling in that time to over 9,500. At the same time, it’s almost unheard of for a private rental property to come on the market in the borough within the Local Housing Allowance rate. The result is that local people are priced out of the area, or into privately rented homes that are too small for their needs, or that they simply can’t afford, too often putting up with unacceptable conditions.

As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham put housing at the heart of his strategy to create a ‘thriving city-region where everyone can live a good life,’ and the Greater Manchester Good Landlord Charter, launched by Burnham just over a year ago, is a crucial tool to achieving this.

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The Charter is based on a set of criteria that were co-produced by a coordinating group comprised of tenants’ groups and landlord organisations, alongside housing associations and local authority representation. The criteria all go ‘above and beyond’ the legal requirements that landlords must meet. For example, under the Renters’ Rights Act, landlords must give two months’ notice before increasing rent, Charter landlords must give three months.

The criteria sit under seven key themes: affordable, inclusive, private and secure, responsive, supportive, well-managed, and safe and decent. Criteria include a commitment to engage with training on inclusivity, and adopting high standards throughout the tenancy, from using easy-to-understand contracts and allowing adaptations to homes for disabled tenants, to having clear policies for check-in and check-out.

Landlords sign up to the Charter as ‘Supporters’, are assigned a professional advisor and given access to training and support to help them achieve the criteria. Once they have demonstrated they meet all the criteria, they become ‘Members’ of the Charter. The Charter is free for landlords, and all the support it offers is also free, removing a significant barrier to training and development opportunities.

While the Charter is voluntary for landlords to join, devolution allowed Burnham to create incentives for landlords to join the Charter through the Warm Homes: Local Grant fund, where landlords can apply for grants to retrofit homes (supporting one of the Charter’s criteria of meeting EPC C, with the impact of bringing down energy bills for tenants). Only landlords who have signed up to the Charter can apply for the grants in Greater Manchester, meaning that in order to access public funding, landlords need to get on board with raising standards.

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New GM Mayor, Bev Craig, committed to ‘strengthening’ the Good Landlord Charter in her manifesto, indicating that the approach Burnham instigated will gather pace in his former patch. While Rayner recently ruled out rent controls at a national level, Craig’s manifesto said she will: “set up a Commission on Rents: to look at how rent limits, caps or controls would work for Greater Manchester.”

While under the Good Landlord Charter, there are no requirements or criteria for rent caps, landlords need to have a clear and fair rent review and setting process. This includes giving the rationale for the level rent is set, and the Charter sets an assumption that in-tenancy increases will be kept below CPI + 1% unless ‘reasonably justifiable’.

Landlords must also give a fair amount of time to tenants who struggle to pay their rent, and provide them with advice on how to challenge rent increases at the First-Tier Tribunal, which recognises the fact that many tenants are unaware of the options available to them and so do not challenge rent increases.

From my perspective as a councillor in the region, one of the strengths of the Charter is that it has a clear place-based focus within Greater Manchester. And through my role in the Charter’s Implementation Unit, I’ve seen how partnership working across the city-region is vital to the Charter’s success, whether through forging strong relationships with local universities to develop the Charter for student accommodation, or through giving landlords the chance to hear from local charities and tenants’ organisations to support their learning and development.

We’ve yet to see if Burnham’s government will draw on the Charter in his efforts to solve the housing crisis nationally, but his commitment to both devolution and raising housing standards suggests combined authorities may be encouraged to look at how they can use levers locally to support landlords in raising standards. 

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