Breakthrough for Tenant Rights in England
Written by SP Editor
By Anny Cullum
The Renters Rights Act came into force on the 1st May 2026 and has been hailed as a once in a generation change - fundamentally redressing the power imbalance between landlords and tenants in England. ACORN in England played an important role in this victory for tenants, putting the rights of private renters on the political agenda; keeping this on the agenda through the political fall outs of Brexit, COVID, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine; and fighting to get a version of the law that was as strong for tenants as possible in the political climate.
So, what was it all about? Before the 1st May, England’s private renters faced some of the worst conditions and weakest protections of any country in Europe, or in fact most of the global north. The 1988 Housing Act brought in by Margaret Thatcher did away with rent controls and introduced a brand-new mechanism to evict tenants - the Section 21 “no fault eviction”, England's leading cause of homelessness. Using Section 21, a landlord could evict a tenant giving just 2 months’ notice to leave before going to court and getting the bailiffs out, they could do this without having to give any reason to the court at all, and as long as they filed the paperwork and followed the very simple procedures correctly, the law gave judges no power to overturn a Section 21 eviction regardless of the tenant’s circumstances.
Over the following decades the housing market in England became hotter and hotter - a rapidly shrinking social housing stock coupled with the post-2008 rocket increases in house prices has seen the percentage of households living in private rentals double since 1988 to nearly 30% and the number of landlords increase to nearly 3 million individuals (higher than the number of teachers in England). Meanwhile the austerity agenda of the Conservative government in the 2010s saw local governments stripped of the little resources they had to police housing standards and bad practice. The result? An expensive, insecure, and low quality private rented sector where renters have been literally bidding against each other to secure a new home, while the country has the highest percentage of indecent homes in the whole of Europe. Tenants who complained about any problems with their homes ran the perpetual risk of being evicted, and were choosing between putting up with living in a rundown home or running the risk of being kicked out of that home for asking the landlord for repairs.
Enter ACORN. In 2014 when the first group launched in Bristol, private renting was the top issue members wanted to work on. The situation for renters wasn't as dire as it would get over the next 10 years of a worsening housing crisis, but people were fed up with being evicted, of having only short-term contracts and of the rents rising all the time. Over the next 5 years, ACORN would tackle the inevitable outcomes of policies which put all the power in landlords’ hands at the grassroots level. We took direct collective action against landlords who issued evictions to our members rather than fix rotting floor boards or rising damp by turning up at their homes, flyering neighborhoods and picketing their associated businesses. We named and shamed agencies that were stoking and profiteering from spiraling rents with demonstrations and community rallies. We called on local governments to use the little powers they did have to greater effect, pushing through landlord licensing schemes for greater scrutiny and accountability where we had branches. We physically stopped court bailiffs entering our members’ homes to carry out eviction warrants. We registered thousands of renters and homeless people to vote. And we did all this as loudly as we could. Our consistent direct action and campaigning helped renters become a political constituency that politicians knew they could no longer ignore, and kept renters’ issues on their agenda.
In 2019, the then prime minister Theresa May announced that Section 21 evictions would be outlawed - a huge moment for us and the wider housing movement. This was set to be done as part of a suite of reforms to private renting, promised to be the biggest shake up since 1988 and Margaret Thatcher. Next would come a long battle to make the most of this opportunity, with huge stumbling blocks such as the pandemic, the revolving door of housing ministers, in-fighting within a government full of landlords to contend with.
England is a very centralized country. Local councils run lots of services and are responsible for upholding standards in lots of areas of public life, but most of the decisions that fundamentally impact the experiences of our members on the issues they care about; housing, welfare, cost of living; are made by central government - and unless you are an organization of millions then picketing outside parliament isn't going to result in a win for your campaign. We needed to enter the world of political lobbying and learn a new skill set to ensure that we could best fight for the interests of our members and renters across the country.
ACORN joined the Renters Reform Coalition, an alliance of 20 organizations advocating for renters’ rights - large charities, smaller renters’ unions, the national students’ union, small think tanks, advocacy organizations, lobbying campaign groups, law center networks. Housing campaigning is a crowded space, and rather than allowing the government to pick and choose which groups it spoke to depending on whose policies were most conveniently aligned with them on each housing issue, the coalition created a united front to maximize the power of tenants against an already hugely powerful and well-organized landlord lobby (the National Residential Landlords Association boasts over 100,000 members). Where some coalition members brought an encyclopedic knowledge of housing law, existing political connections, lobbying experience, data and analysis, we brought an active base of engaged renters who were up for the fight and a track record of fighting and winning on the ground.
COVID put a pause to campaigning but coming into 2021 the coalition's first task was to agree on a policy platform to push for - this needed to be something every organization could get behind, that was politically realistic, but, most importantly, that delivered for tenants. The work of ACORN staff and elected member representatives who sat on the coalition successfully pushed against some of the more cautious and conservative organizations to negotiate a coalition blueprint for the bill that, while not as radical as our own housing manifesto, was much more ambitious and meant the larger charities with the ear of the government would be pushing for policies our members cared about the most. For example, many representatives in the coalition didn't want rent controls to feature in the blueprint. They worried these were far too progressive for the right-wing government and that the policy platform wouldn't gain any traction or credibility in government if they were included. Our members were clear that they wanted to see some form of rent regulation there, because without it rising rents were just as bad as a section 21 for forcing tenants out of their homes through no fault of their own - and as we all know, the rent is too high! We, along with some others, persuaded fellow coalition members to adopt a policy against 'economic eviction’ calling for a limit to how much rent could rise each year to protect against rent hikes replacing Section 21 evictions - by communicating these limits as a means to protect against the undermining of the eviction protections, rather than calling them rent controls, we got the policy in the platform.
Once the platform was written the coalition worked to push for a bill to enter parliament. This involved promotional events in Westminster, meetings with ministers and civil servants, media work and lobbying. ACORN took full advantage of these activities to learn about how to influence at the national level, and to give our members the opportunity to get face to face time with decision makers. We sent dozens of members to events and meetings, building them up as leaders, with some giving the speeches at receptions. We helped push a petition for a bill that reached over 50,000 signatories which one of our members delivered to Number 10 (the prime minister’s residence) with 3 other coalition partners. In March of 2023 we took around 150 members to parliament to attend a mass lobby day arranged by the coalition, boarding early morning coaches from Leeds, Manchester, Bristol and driving from across the country. Members spoke to their MPs about their experiences renting and put questions to the housing minister directly in a Q&A. All the while we continued with our bread and butter, fighting evictions, moldy homes and unfair charges on the ground and keeping the issue live on the agenda.
In May 2023, the bill’s first draft was published. As expected in a government full to the brim with landlords, it fell short of our ideals in quite a few areas. We polled our members, outlining the areas of our policy platform it didn't meet and asked them to vote for their top three key issues to inform where we should put our staff and elected members' time and resources into as the bill progressed. These were scrutinized by our elected national committee and priorities of closing loopholes around eviction, bolstering landlord licensing, pushing for longer notice periods for new eviction grounds, and regulating against rent hikes were ratified. For the first time, ACORN was officially invited by the government to attend and give evidence to the committee scrutinizing the bill. Members sent hundreds of emails to MPs on these issues to try to win them as amendments, and held outreach days getting members of the public to do the same. The bill became a political football between rival factions in the crumbling Conservative government - we fought hard against calls to axe it all together through our grassroots work and continued work with the coalition.
The snap general election in 2024 saw the Conservative Party fall and the Labour Party take office in July. During the election cycle, we hosted hustings across the candidates winning pledges from candidates of all political colors to push the renters’ bill. When Labour gained power, they committed to publish a new bill in the first 100 days. With a much less right leaning government in charge, the whole coalition agreed to write a new, more ambitious policy platform. ACORN successfully pushed the inclusion of bolder policies on issues such as illegal eviction and bidding wars (the practice of landlords asking prospective tenants to bid over the asking rent to ‘win’ the tenancy). On the first publication of the new bill, we were pleased to see that three out of four of our members’ priorities for amendments under the previous government had already been addressed! We went about the process again of polling members to agree on new priorities for us to advance, our national committee decided on: ending the practice of landlords charging multiple months’ rent in advance, bolstering landlord licensing, stronger protections against illegal eviction and pushing rent control (we didn't think we would win this right now, but that it needed to be part of the debate for the long haul fight). As part of our work to advance this agenda, we persuaded three members of parliament to table amendments to the bill on our priority issues - one sparking a long debate in the house about rent controls and another seeing the banning of charging multiple months’ rent upfront.
This win is one in which we have great pride. Another coalition member organization approached us and said that the civil servants said they needed to see more evidence on the issue of charging so much rent in advance before they could recommend it as an amendment. Our members were keen to see this outlawed as it was being used as a back door method to discriminate against and not rent to families receiving welfare. It's against British equality law to outright say ‘no welfare,’ but if you require someone to stump up 6 months to a year’s worth of rent at the start of their contract you are effectively shutting out the majority of people reliant on welfare. I polled our email list and had an overwhelming response. Our members and supporters’ data showed that people on benefits were three times more likely to be asked to pay a year in advance than others. The testimonies and data were used by ACORN, the charity and the MP in our arguments, and a week later the bill was amended to cap rent in advance payments to one month.
Much as under the previous government’s bill, we continued to take every opportunity brokered by the coalition for members to go to parliament. We sent hundreds of emails on these key issues, we presented evidence to the government committees, gave hundreds of media comments and interviews, and we kept on fighting for renters on the ground.
In October 2025, the Bill finally passed into the statute book. We saw wins on three out of the four priorities our members initiated. Beginning the first of May 2026, renters can no longer be evicted without a reason; they have open ended contracts which provide the security to stay as long as they like; if the landlord needs the home back to live in or sell they have to give 4 months’ notice (double what we had before); rent can only go up once a year; renters have a right to pets; and local government has more power, money and duties to police standards and crack down on bad practices. The bill also commits the government to bringing in a landlord registry (due later this year) and rolling out a new set of minimum decency standards.
There's still a lot more that needs to be done (rent controls for one thing), but there's no doubt that the end of Section 21s and this new swathe of rules marks a shift in the power dynamic between landlords and renters. I truly believe that the Renters Rights Act wouldn't be as powerful as it is for tenants, or even have survived all the political hurdles, if ACORN members hadn't been organizing and campaigning tirelessly since 2014. We need mass social house building if we want to solve the housing crisis in England, but at least as of this month, its symptoms won't be so sharp for England’s 13 million private renters.
Anny Cullum has been the head of policy for ACORN England and Wales.