Labour make Tenants the focus of campaign launch.

The Labour party have put Tenants at the forefront of their campaign launch, pledging a fairer system for tenants, and a promise that they will remove the fear of having to move.

If Labour wins the next election they would place a cap on landlords raising rents, and scrap any letting fees, in addition to changing Tenancy Agreements.

Recent reports show that 20% of households in the UK fall into the private rental market; this is an increase of over 50% in 10 years, more and more of us are looking to rent as property prices continue to rise and credit becomes harder to come by.

Despite this rise in terms of the percentage of homeowners renting we are still way behind other countries - in Europe in Germany around 60% of households rent, but perhaps we are seeing the future.

Ed Miliband has stated that he will put an end to excessive rises in rent, with landlords being given an upper ceiling, which will stop any hikes, but as the ceiling is based on average rent rises and these tend to be linked with other factions in the property market do not think renting will suddenly be a very cheap option; the Bank of England on the same day has warned of its concern on the spiralling housing market.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has been given the task of setting a figure for this, but at the moment no figures are available; this type of cap is not a new thing in a number of countries around the world caps are in place restricting increases in rent.

How would the new system work?

Landlords would agree a rental value for a property and could only conduct a review once a year, under that review the landlord would only be allowed to raise rents up to the industry benchmark; over the past four years rents have risen 13%, but all the time it becomes expensive to own a home it will be expensive to rent one: perhaps the solution to the increases in rents is to change the supply of housing, or to curb overseas investment, review planning and government funding schemes.

Will these promises help? Yes; but will they make renting cheaper? We don't think so.

The regulations help by giving the tenant protection; once a tenant has agreed an initial rent then the landlord can only raise it in line with the benchmark.

Changes in tenancy agreements.

The proposed changes in the contracts are that after an initial probation period (6 months) a tenant's contract will automatically run for a further 29 months: in doing this Labour hope that this will give tenants more certainty if they wish to stay in a property for longer periods, however a landlord still has the right to ask you to move out of the property if they wanted to sell or use the property themselves.

Removing rental charges.

Labour have also called for rental charges to be abolished - call me cynical, but if there is a rental charge made by a letting agent this forms part of their business revenue; if this is abolished they will seek to replace it, perhaps by charging the landlord, who will in turn seek to recover this additional cost from who? Perhaps the tenant? We will see.

Tenants' rights do need protecting, and it is time to review the system; if we look to Europe we will see examples of where this has worked, but housing is a problem that has multiple issues that need resolving before a solution can be found.