Our housing correspondent, BARRATT HOLMES, on what changes await renters during Renters’ Rights Awareness Week
Sky-high rentals: private renters living in scandalous conditions, as in The Fold, might get a better deal once the Renters’ Rights Bill is passed into law
Renters in Croydon are about to have their experience transformed. At least, that’s what the Labour government would have us believe as their Renters ’ Rights Bill goes through its final stages in Parliament.
This week is Renters’ Rights Awareness Week, an annual event run by Generation Rent, and they are hosting a series of free webinars to explain what these new laws are and what they mean for renters, as well as some existing rights that aren’t going to change.
The 2021 census found that 44% of households in Croydon were renters and 60% of those rented from private landlords. With build-to-rent tall tower blocks still sprouting across Croydon and the often cheap conversion of office blocks into rabbit hutch homes, it seems probable that those proportions from four years ago will be higher still today.
Croydon has a sad and sorry history of poor treatment of renters, from the slum-like state of the council flats on Regina Road through to the ongoing problems at the private rented apartments in The Fold.
At Inside Croydon, we have done our best to highlight these dreadful cases. If we reported on every awful landlord and every single individual renter living in substandard conditions in Croydon, we would have no time or space to report on anything else.
Not every landlord treats their tenants badly, but the fact that Generation Rent are having webinars to help renters on basic things like getting their landlords to do repairs and how to get your deposit back, shows that bad, neglectful landlords are far from rare.
When the Conservatives were in government, they proposed a Renters Reform Bill. But they failed to deliver it. Labour has now taken that on in its Renters Rights Bill and it looks like this will come into force next year.
The Bill has been generally welcomed by renters’ groups as it does make some significant improvements. But the consensus is that it still doesn’t go far enough.
Spy Baby Spy: Steve Reed is ‘no friend of landlords’. Apparently
Housing minister Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North, if he can be bothered), has been described as “no friend of landlords”… although there are plenty of his fellow Labour MPs who collect the rents from properties that they rent out. The influence of Tory and Labour MP landlords, and property lobbyists, on government policy is seen by many as a reason why the legislation doesn’t go any further. We know that this was why previous Conservative attempts at legislation were diluted so much that they were eventually abandoned.
This week, party membership of the Greens has surpassed 100,000 for the first time, in some part because of the party’s new leader, Zack Polanski’s announcement of an “abolish landlords” policy. That, though, isn’t likely to be enacted for some time. In the meantime, Croydon renters are left waiting for any improvements to come through.
If you are a renter you can find out more about the Renters Rights Bill in Generation Rent’s webinars: https://www.generationrent.org/renters-rights-awareness-week-2025/.
Will your experience of renting be transformed? Let us know.
Read more: Mouldy Fold: no problems with council flats says Town Hall
Read more: ‘Let us be free from this hellhole’: Fold tenants issue demands
Read more: Croydon shamed over ‘dangerous squalor’ in council flats
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