A prominent academic says rents in the UK are out of control, and accuses landlords of “extracting wealth from the poor to enrich the rich.”
Richard Murphy is Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University and describes himself as an economic justice campaigner and a political economist.
In a blog post he cites data from the Office for National Statistics showing that, on average in England, the cost of rental property in proportion to people’s gross incomes rose by 3% in the year 2023/24 – the most recent data available.
In London, the cost is now in excess of 40% of the gross income of people who are renting their properties. In England as a whole, it’s now reached 36%.
Murphy says this is grossly unfair and writes: “[Tenants] are not working for the sake of putting food on the table. They’re not working for the sake of having a good life.
“They’re working to pay their landlords. We should have got beyond this point now.
“… We can’t live forever in a society where rents are literally dragging people into real poverty after tax and after paying for the essentials of living, where they cannot work out how to make ends meet.”
He says the government should either introduce private rent controls or provide sufficient social housing at genuinely affordable rents.
You can see Murphy’s post in full here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/08/19/rent-crisis-britain/
This article is taken from Landlord Today