England made it easier to fight rent rises. Will UK rent growth stay at 3.8%?
UK rents rose 3.8% in the year to September, the same as in August, the Office for National Statistics says. Its next figure comes on 18 November.
What happened
Tenants are challenging rent increases in record numbers since the Renters’ Rights Act came into effect in May, making the process easier and less risky for renters.
UK rents rose 3.8% in the year to . The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on that the average monthly rent was £1,406, and that the rise was the same as in the year to August. In England rents rose 4.0%, also the same as a month before. In Scotland they rose 0.7%, the lowest since the ONS figures began in 2016.
A new law in England made it easier to fight a rent rise. Since the Renters’ Rights Act began in May, a housing tribunal, a panel that settles disputes, can no longer set a rent higher than the landlord asked for. Landlords can also no longer evict a tenant without a reason. The Guardian reported on that tenants are taking rent rises to the tribunal in record numbers.
Rents still went up in most of those disputes. The London Renters Union looked at tribunal decisions from May to October and found that rent went up for 80% of tenants, by £1,200 a year on average, although in most cases by less than the landlord asked. In one home in Dagenham, the monthly rent rose 88%, from £1,200 to £2,250. Chris Norris of the National Residential Landlords Association said the system “wasn’t working for anyone”. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said “We’re already seeing evidence that our changes are working”.
The next ONS figure comes on at 9:30. It will show how much rents rose in the year to , the sixth month of the new law. The same release may also change the figures for August and September, which ONS still calls early estimates.
Average UK monthly private rent increased by 3.8%, to £1,406, in the 12 months to (provisional estimate)
Office for National Statistics, Private rent and house prices, UK:
Sources: The Guardian, ONS (2)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where ONS published a monthly figure for UK rent growth in the first six months of a law that made it easier for tenants to challenge a rent rise, in the largest part of the country only. The ONS figures start in . We found five such months, May to , all after England’s new law, and checked whether yearly growth fell below the month before.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
Before rounding, UK rent growth for September was 3.81%, just above 3.75%, the point below which ONS would print 3.7%. To stay at 3.8%, rents must rise at least 0.34% in October alone, because they rose 0.39% in . In 2026 they rose 0.37%, 0.51% and 0.43% a month from July to September, but only 0.16% in May. England is closer to the line: 3.99% before rounding, so rents there must rise at least 0.36% in October.
There are reasons for doubt. All five months come from 2026 and the same law, and each yearly figure shares 11 of its 12 months with the next one. After a Scottish law in let tenants send a rent rise to an official, UK growth fell in four of the next six months. Zoopla, a property website, said in September that rents for new tenancies were speeding up and could rise 4% or 5% by the end of the year. Rightmove said in October that “rental growth has continued to settle”.
Sources: ONS, legislation.gov.uk (2), BBC, Evening Standard
Disclaimer
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