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14/7/25 8:13 pm
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Any landlords who support the Green Party will be astonished to discover that delegates at its national conference in Bournemouth have voted to 'abolish' private landlords.
The vote, which was scheduled as one of the event’s plenary sessions and called ‘abolish landlords’ will now be adopted as party policy within England and Wales, although no mention was made of the policy by Zack Polanski (main image) during his headline leader's speech.
Delegates at the conference were told that “the private rental sector has failed [and is] a vehicle for wealth extraction funnelling money from renters to the landlord class.
“This motion makes it clear Green Party policy is to seek the effective abolition of private landlordism and our support for building council housing.”
The motion text went on to say that the Green Party would use its existing and new policies to push landlords out of the sector.
This would include a Land Value Tax on rental properties including for short and holiday lets; rent controls; ending Right-to-Buy; abolishing buy-to-let mortgages and giving Councils the power to borrow in order to fund a new ‘Golden Age’ of high quality and affordable council housing.
The Greens would also set up a state-owned housing manufacturer "to mass produce high quality mass council housing for local authorities".
And like the current Chancellor has recently suggested, the Greens would also levy national insurance on rental income.
The party has also continued to endorse an even more radical policy – to give councils 'first dibs' powers to buy properties off landlords who are selling up or whose homes are not been insulated to a minimum EPC ‘C’ band, do not meet the Decent Homes Standard or are left empty for more than six months.
However the policy was criticised by several Labour MPs including Callum Anderson (pictured) who said: "Abolishing landlords won’t build a single new home.
"Not clear what this motion means and I suspect most Greens don’t either.
"The Labour Government is focused on what really matters: getting more people into safe, affordable and environmentally friendly homes to rent or own."
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