UNIONS and tenants groups called on ministers today to introduce rent controls in an open letter amid an affordability crisis.

Asking rents across the country have risen by 40 per cent since 2020, and the groups said that if the government had introduced a rent freeze in 2022, renting households would by now be saving £3,200 per year.

Unison, PCS and the New Economics Foundation are among the 30 organisations that have joined the London Renters Union and other tenant groups to demand action.

The open letter addressed to Chancellor Rachel Reeves calls for a temporary rent freeze followed by long-term rent controls and investment in council housing.

Any form of rent control should apply both between tenancies and within tenancies, it said, adding that this would avoid the loophole in Scotland’s 2022 rent freeze, which allowed landlords to hike rents drastically for new tenants.

Unison general secretary Andrea Egan said that a third of her union’s members in private tenancies spend more than three-fifths of their income on rent, warning that it makes “true housing security impossible.”

She said: “While landlords squeeze ever larger profits from them, front-line public service workers are forced into agonising choices between food and heating.

“Ministers who own their own comfortable homes are far removed from the realities of renting.”

Noting that four-fifths of the public back action on rents, Ms Egan said: “If this government wants to resolve its current political drift, improve the lives of hard-working people and make a tangible difference, it must introduce a comprehensive system of rent controls.”

Ms Reeves had reportedly been considering introducing a rent freeze as part of plans to cut the cost of living but Downing Street dismissed the idea.