Greens to Push for Three-Year Freeze on Private Rents as Polanski Opens Conference

Green Party of England and Wales leader Zack Polanski will use his conference speech on Friday to demand a three-year emergency limit on private rent increases, positioning housing as the central test of fairness between generations.

Addressing activists in Brighton on Friday afternoon, Polanski is expected to call on the government to cap annual private rent rises at whichever is lowest: the consumer price index measure of inflation, average wage growth, or 2%. The proposed ceiling would remain in place for three years, a period the party describes as an "emergency brake" designed to give tenants breathing room while longer-term reforms take shape.

According to the party, Polanski will argue that pressure from the Greens has already pushed Labour into shifting its political direction on several fronts. He is expected to present the rent plan as the next logical step in that campaign, framing housing costs as a defining issue of generational fairness.

The conference in Brighton has been billed by the Greens as their largest ever. The party announced earlier this year that its membership had tripled since Polanski was elected leader just over a year ago, a surge that has reshaped its internal expectations and its public ambitions.

In his remarks, Polanski is expected to paint a picture of a generation squeezed by the cost of a roof over its head. He will say people are being forced to live with their parents well into adulthood — 19-year-olds commuting to university, 25-year-olds unable to find work, and 35-year-olds moving back home with their partners.

"For too long, landlords have been able to hike prices way beyond wages, leaving renters forced to meet the cost to keep a roof over their heads, cutting back and back and back on everything else," he is expected to say. A slowdown in private rent increases, he will argue, "would give renters vital breathing space" and create time for ministers to design a national Fair Rents Guarantee that keeps rents affordable over the long term.

The intervention comes against the backdrop of the government's Renters' Rights Act, introduced earlier this year. Under that legislation, landlords can only raise rent once a year, and only up to the property's open market rate. The Act also converted tenancies to rolling arrangements rather than fixed terms and made it harder for landlords to evict tenants.

Polanski is expected to argue that those measures, while welcome, do not go far enough in ending the "fear and uncertainty" faced by millions of private renters across the UK. The Greens have long campaigned for rent controls, and the leadership now sees an opening to push the argument into the mainstream.

Average UK monthly private rents rose by 3.5% in the 12 months to January 2026, reaching £1,377, according to Office for National Statistics figures. That pace of increase, the party argues, continues to outstrip what many tenants can absorb, particularly in cities where demand is strongest.

The proposal is not without critics. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has previously warned that rent controls of the kind the Greens favour would produce "unintended consequences," including demand exceeding supply in the rental market. Economists have long cautioned that capping rents can discourage landlords from letting properties, reduce investment in new housing, and push would-be tenants into informal or overcrowded arrangements.

The party's co-deputy leader, Rachel Millward, rejected that framing in an interview with BBC Breakfast. She said most landlords were "super-earners" who were making more money than people in other sectors and "would be able to absorb a slight reduction in rent." Her comments signal that the Greens intend to meet the economic argument head-on rather than avoid it.

The conference arrives at a delicate moment for the party. Earlier this year the Greens gained hundreds of councillors in England's local elections and secured a fifth MP, Hannah Spencer, in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Those results cemented the party's status as a growing electoral force, particularly in urban and younger constituencies.

Yet there are signs that its rise in national polls may have stalled in recent months. The party also faces questions about how to respond to Labour's change of leadership under Andy Burnham. Since Burnham became prime minister, Labour has shifted its stance in several areas where it had been in danger of being outflanked politically by the Greens.

Millward said in an interview ahead of the conference that Labour was now "rhetorically, on a much more similar ground" to her party. She pointed to Burnham's move towards electoral reform — a long-standing Green demand for a shake-up of the Westminster voting system — and his opening the door to a much closer future relationship with the European Union.

Labour has also announced sanctions on Israeli West Bank settlements deemed illegal under international law, and the reopening of a scheme to resettle refugees. Speaking before the conference, Polanski claimed both policies were the product of electoral pressure applied by his party, arguing that the Greens are shaping the terms of debate even without holding power at Westminster.

The timing of the conference could prove awkward for Polanski, who is standing for the Greens in next week's Holborn and St Pancras by-election. The contest was triggered by Sir Keir Starmer's decision to leave Parliament. Polanski said last week that he intended to come "straight back" to the central London seat after delivering his leader's speech, and he has urged party activists to leave the conference over the weekend to help him campaign.

Victory in Holborn and St Pancras would give the Greens their first seat in the capital, but it would require overturning a substantial Labour majority from the 2024 general election. A full list of candidates has been published, and the result will be read as a signal of whether the party's momentum can translate into parliamentary gains in Labour's heartlands.

For now, Polanski's speech is designed to do two things at once: set out a concrete, populist-sounding policy on rents, and claim credit for dragging Labour onto ground the Greens have occupied for years. Whether voters reward that strategy in Holborn and St Pancras — and whether Labour's own housing agenda neutralises it — will become clearer within days.