It fixed the security. It didn’t touch the price.
This is not a criticism smuggled in by us. It's the government's own position, stated plainly in its guide to the Act: it does not support rent controls, and nothing in the Act restricts landlords raising rents in line with market prices.02 The Act is about security and standards. Affordability was never on its list.
So the London numbers are unchanged in the way that matters. Average private rent in London reached £2,294 a month in May 2026, the highest of any English region, against £1,442 for England as a whole. Kensington and Chelsea, at £3,591, is the most expensive local authority in the United Kingdom.06
There is a genuine bright spot in that release: London's annual rent inflation is running at 2.0%, the lowest of any English region. But it would be dishonest to hand that to the Act. The slowdown in UK rent inflation began in December 2024, well over a year before any of this commenced.06
Economic evictions, or landlords raising rents to levels that tenants can't afford, could be used as a backdoor mechanism.
That warning is ACORN's Anny Cullum, giving evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, where affordability was described as "the key area that is missing from the act". Generation Rent's Nye Jones put the same worry more bluntly: "revenge rent hikes as an eviction process will become a thing."08 The tribunal is the answer to that, but Generation Rent's polling found nearly seven in ten renters have never heard of it, or know very little about it.08
It's worth being clear that renter groups back this Act. Generation Rent's Ben Twomey called it "a major step forward in rebalancing the power between landlords and renters".09 The argument isn't that it's bad. It's that it's half the problem.
Londoners agree, emphatically. In a February 2026 YouGov poll for the Greater London Authority, 75% supported a cap on annual rent increases and 9% opposed it, rising to 83% among private renters. The Mayor is asking for those powers to be devolved. He does not have them.09
And one thing got harder
Here's the part that mostly goes unmentioned, and it's the one our founder hit personally. Because every tenancy is now periodic with a rent period of no more than a month, the tenant's notice is two months, ending at the end of a rent period. So you're on a monthly rolling tenancy, but you owe two months.02
It also means that you have to give two months to your landlord with a one-month rolling clause. That is also really difficult.
On paper it's flexibility: you can leave any time, no fixed term. In practice, if you find a place you want, you are choosing between two months of double rent and losing it. In a market where a quarter of homes are gone within 10 days of appearing, that is not a theoretical cost. The reform that freed you from the fixed term also gave you a two-month tail to drag behind you.
None of which is an argument against the Act. On 1 May, London renters got real protection from arbitrary eviction, and the auction after the viewing became illegal. Both are worth having. They just don't make renting in London affordable, or fast, or calm, and the Act was never going to.