ANDY BURNHAM cannot claim to be tackling the cost of living while taking one of its strongest tools off the table, renters’ rights campaigners warned today as ministers ruled out rent controls.

Returning Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said she would not set limits to rent in her bid to help with the cost of living, claiming recently enacted protections for tenants were “already having a significant impact on the market.”

“We won’t be looking at rent controls,” Ms Rayner told BBC Breakfast today, “that is not something that we’re looking to do because we’ve seen what’s happened in areas like Scotland.

“It hasn’t necessarily brought rents down.”

The Housing Secretary, who was stepped down last year from the role over failing to pay stamp duty on her home in Hove, said: “I don’t think that rent freezes, rent controls, is a way forward at the moment.

“We implemented between then the Renters’ Rights Act which is giving renters more power and control.”

Ms Rayner also admitted that Labour’s manifesto pledge to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament is “challenging,” but that she would not be “dropping” the promise despite it being “a really difficult stretched target.”

Her comments followed earlier indications that Mr Burnham’s government would take action to rein in soaring rents.

The new PM told reporters on Monday that he was considering rent freezes as part of a package of measures, but that nothing had been confirmed yet.

Tenants’ union Acorn slammed Ms Rayner’s comments, calling for “action, not excuses,” saying that people need a government “that’s prepared to tackle the housing crisis with the urgency it demands.”

Its national chair Eleesha Taylor-Barrett told the Star: “For renters, this is becoming a familiar pattern.

“Ministers acknowledge the scale of the housing crisis, then start lowering expectations about what can be achieved.

“The government can’t claim to be tackling the cost of living while taking one of the strongest tools for tackling soaring rents off the table.”

She added: “Every month, tenants see more of their wages swallowed up by rent while landlords continue to cash in.

“If the government is serious about being a ‘cost-of-living government,’ it needs to start making housing genuinely affordable and secure for renters.”

London Renters’ Union (LRU) activist Maya Bhardwaj told the Star that Ms Rayner’s comments were “simply untrue.”

Despite protections brought in under the Renters’ Rights Act (RRA), “we’re still seeing renters forced to cut back on essentials, and even lose their homes, because of rent increases of 50 per cent or more.”

The tribunal system, which Ms Rayner described as an adequate check on landlords, is “already so overwhelmed in London that cases are being referred to tribunals in other cities,” Ms Bhardwaj said.

Meanwhile, rents have risen by 39 per cent since 2020, the LRU said, and for the poorest 20 per cent of households who rent privately, they pay on average two-thirds of their household income to their landlord.

A rent freeze would “put more than £2,000 back into the pockets of renters so we no longer need to cut back on food and other essentials” and would save the government £2bn on housing benefits a year.

“Even if rent fell by 10 per cent, only 2 per cent of landlords would become unprofitable,” Ms Bhardwaj added.

Similar controls are in place in 16 other European countries, including Germany and Sweden, “and the sky hasn’t fallen in as the landlord lobby would like us to believe,” the LRU said.

Generation Rent chief executive Holly Williamson acknowledged that the RRA was a “vital first step” in “addressing the power imbalance between tenants and landlords, but it does not go far enough to address the cost of rents.

“High rents lock people in poverty, and mean children going to school hungry and families stuck living in temporary accommodation.

“A limit on rent increases would be a hugely impactful cost of living measure that places very little strain on Treasury budgets.”

The new chief executive of Generation Rent demanded ministers “review the evidence as they develop their plans to tackle the affordability crisis.”