The chief executive of Foxtons has cautioned that Labour’s proposed ban on landlords demanding upfront rental payments could exacerbate the struggles of low-income tenants, rather than easing them.
In a letter to Angela Rayner, written last Tuesday, Guy Gittins argued that many renters depend on advance payments as a practical lifeline when their incomes are irregular or insufficient to pass traditional affordability checks.
Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill—designed to strengthen the hand of private renters by ending no-fault evictions and banning large upfront rent demands—may come into force later this year. The party has pledged to overhaul the rental market, but Gittins believes the legislation’s current provisions overlook the complexities of ensuring fair access to housing.
Foxtons data suggests about one in seven tenants narrowly fails affordability checks. Gittins insists a blanket ban on advance rent will primarily hit those with lower or unpredictable income, such as self-employed individuals and pensioners, as well as foreign renters without UK guarantors. These groups often use advance payments to demonstrate financial reliability when landlords are hesitant to let property to tenants with limited or patchy credit histories.
Ben Beadle, chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, made a similar case in The Times last month, arguing that advance rent is often “the only way” for those without an established credit history to secure a tenancy. While landlords maintain that upfront payment requests are used to mitigate financial risks, critics claim the practice has been abused in competitive markets, creating bidding wars that ultimately disadvantage renters.
Under Labour’s proposals, landlords will still be allowed to charge one month’s rent up front and request a deposit of up to six weeks’ rent. Should the Renters’ Rights Bill become law later this year, landlords, tenants and letting agents will be given two to three months to adjust—a timeframe Gittins deems “entirely inadequate”, calling for at least six months to re-engineer software systems and retrain staff.
Gittins also warned that the legislation, by focusing on banning upfront rent, fails to tackle the core issue of insufficient housing supply. Chronic undersupply has plagued the sector for years, he said, and any new policies risk creating further complications for lower-income tenants if structural problems remain unaddressed.
A government spokesman, meanwhile, insists the upcoming bill will make the private rental sector “fairer” by ending bidding wars, abolishing no-fault evictions and protecting tenants from excessive upfront costs. Labour’s housing reforms, they say, will give 11 million private renters greater certainty and stability in a historically volatile market.