Zack Polanski to call for three-year cap on private rent rises

Zack Polanski is set to call for a three‑year “emergency brake” on private rent increases when he launches the Green Party’s conference later this week. In his address to activists on Friday afternoon, he will urge the government to prevent rents from rising above the lowest of consumer price inflation, wage growth or 2% for a period of three years. According to the Green Party, Polanski will also argue that pressure from the Greens has compelled Labour to shift its focus on several policy areas. The Green Party of England and Wales is describing its upcoming gathering in Brighton as the largest ever, following an announcement earlier this year that membership had tripled since Polanski’s election as leader just over a year ago. In his speech, Polanski is expected to say that generations are having to live with their parents because of rent prices, citing 19‑year‑olds commuting to university, 25‑year‑olds unable to find work, and 35‑year‑olds moving back home with their partners. He is expected to declare: “For excessively long, landlords person been capable to hike prices mode beyond wages, leaving renters forced to conscionable the outgo to support a extortion implicit their heads, cutting backmost and backmost and backmost connected everything else.” Polanski will add that a slowdown on private rent increases “would springiness renters captious breathing space” and would “springiness clip for ministers to make a nationalist Fair Rents Guarantee that keeps rents affordable for the future.” Earlier this year the government introduced the Renters’ Rights Act, which permits landlords to raise rent only once a year to the property’s open market rate. The legislation also converts tenancies to rolling agreements and makes evictions more difficult. Nevertheless, Polanski is expected to contend that the Act does not go far enough to end the “fear and uncertainty” experienced by millions of private renters across the UK. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has previously warned that rent controls—a policy the Greens have long advocated—could lead to “unintended consequences,” including demand outstripping supply in the rental sector. Average UK monthly private rents increased by 3.5% to £1,377 in the 12 months to January 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics.