Ministers urged to introduce rent caps to tackle housing crisis in England

Exclusive: Letter signed by union leaders and renters’ groups urges government to tackle root cause of unaffordable rents

Unions are calling on ministers to undo “years of damage to the housing sector” by the previous Conservative government and honour its pledge to tackle the housing emergency by introducing a form of rent cap.

Steve North, the president of Unison, the UK’s largest union; Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), and Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, are among seven major union leaders and 19 signatories, including thinktanks, an estate agency firm and renters’ groups, to back the calls.