Lowering Rents & Raising Rights
Over the last five years, the Scottish Greens have delivered more for renters than any other party in the history of the Scottish Parliament:
- reintroducing rent controls for the first time in 40 years;
- delivering a rent freeze and evictions ban during the peak of the cost of living crisis;
- and introducing new rights for renters to decorate their homes and keep pets.
- Greens will never stop working to ensure renters have high quality, safe and affordable homes.
But other parties have clubbed together to create exemptions from rent controls, allowing predatory landlords to charge rip-off rents. We need to go further to ensure councils are able to bring in meaningful rent controls, and that these can be used to drive down the cost of renting.
Not only are renters still paying too much, they are paying too much for too little. Greens will support councils to drive up the quality of rental homes in their areas by giving them new powers to penalise landlords for poor quality homes, and make it easier for renters to complain and get compensation when something isn’t right.
And despite improvements, renters can still be removed from their home too easily. We will give those who rent more security such as protecting them against their home being sold from beneath them, and restoring the scrapped ban on cruel winter evictions originally delivered by the Scottish Greens.
Strengthening rent controls
- Support councils to implement the rent controls won by the Scottish Greens as soon as possible.
- Restore the interim rent controls recklessly abolished by the SNP Government, and provide financial support for local councils to undertake the work necessary to introduce new rent controls.
- Abolish the Scottish Government’s inflation-busting rent increases by capping rents in Rent Control Areas at the lowest of inflation or average earnings, up to a maximum of 6%. Where there is exceptional pressure on renters, empower councils to specify a lower cap, freeze rents or require a decrease.
- Allow local councils to remove from the landlord register any landlords who have issued illegal rent increases, and give councils the power to take action to prevent homelessness when a landlord is removed from the register.
- Introduce rent controls on student accommodation.
Better rights for renters
- Empower renters to withhold rent or pay reduced rent when basic property safety, quality and energy standards are not met.
- Require landlords to put on public record past rent data, required safety checks and certificates, energy efficiency information, and their history of complaints and fines, so renters can choose a reliable landlord of a safe and high quality property.
- Reform affordable renting options such as Mid-Market Rent, which is currently unfit for purpose, and scrap the forthcoming exemption of Mid-Market and Build-to-Rent properties from rent controls, introduced solely as a result of lobbying by profiteering landlords.
- Strengthen the role of tenants and local councils in the governance of Registered Social Landlords.
- Support tenant unions and national tenant-led campaigns, such as Living Rent, that seek to improve the quality and standard of housing and the treatment of tenants.
- Introduce powers for councils to protect tenants from homelessness when a landlord is removed from the landlord register.
Secure, reliable tenancies
- Increase the notice period for eviction to 4 months.
- Ban evictions based on the landlord selling or moving themselves or their family into the property for the first 12 months of the tenancy.
- Restore the ban on most evictions between November and March, which Scottish Green MSPs previously secured.
- Ensure landlords pay compensation equivalent to 2 months’ rent where the tenant is being evicted for the property to be sold, re-rented or occupied by the landlord or their family.
- Offer greater rights and protections for renters when the landlord wishes to access the property for repairs or other works.
- Devolve the setting of landlord registration fees to councils, to allow them to reinvest in secure and reliable homes.