Mary-Anne Bowring, group managing director at Ringley and creator of automated lettings platform, PlanetRent comments:

“A rent freeze is just another type of rent control and will have exactly the same effect: reduced investment into the rental marketing, reducing the availability and quality of rental housing and in turn pushing up rents.

“While the government was right to bring in initial protections for tenants at the start of the pandemic, landlords should not be expected to subsidise renters indefinitely. Already there is evidence of rent arrears mounting up and for many landlords, their rental property is their pension. “If the government was serious about avoiding carnage in the private rented sector it would consider extending the furlough scheme and increasing benefit payments.”