Labour's rent controls - more details emerge of how they would apply

The shadow housing minister, John Healey, has started to flesh out the details of Labour's proposed rent controls, announced by Jeremy Corbyn last week.

Writing on the Huffington Post website over the weekend Healey said there would be "no old-fashioned rent caps" but instead "modern local solutions to a pressing problem for England's 4.5m renting households."

Different cities across the country would be "able to balance the needs of renters with encouraging new housing supply in a way that suits their local housing markets."

Elsewhere in the article, Healey says the additional controls - which at this stage would appear to be proposed just for cities rather than the whole country - would be allowing "increases in rents to be moderated" in urban areas" where housing cost pressures are most acute."

Healey also used the HuffPost piece to reiterate other Labour policies for the private rental sector, including more landlord licensing, unspecified "new minimum standards" and the issuing of three year tenancy terms as standard: these were already contained in Labour June 2017 General Election manifesto.

Corbyn's broad commitment to rent controls was sharply criticised immediately after his conference speech with groups ranging from ARLA to housing charity Shelter expressing levels of concern about the effectiveness and possible unintended consequences of the controls.