Zack Polanski urges three-year rent cap as Greens confront Labour shift

Zack Polanski is demanding a three-year emergency freeze on private rent increases, using his speech opening the Green Party conference in Brighton to pitch housing reform as a generational battleground.

Under the Green plan, landlords would be barred from increasing private rents by more than 2 per cent, wage growth, or the consumer price index, whichever is lowest. Polanski argues that while the government passed the Renters' Rights Act earlier this year to limit rises to once a year at open market rates, the change has left tenants exposed to relentless cost increases.

According to the Office for National Statistics, average monthly private rents rose by 3.5 per cent to £1,377 in the year to January 2026. Polanski told supporters that younger Britons are being pushed into financial dependence on their families, describing households cutting essentials to cover housing. The pause, he says, would buy time for ministers to establish a permanent "Fair Rents Guarantee". Economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have warned against statutory rent caps, arguing that restricting prices tends to shrink supply and leave demand unmet.

Labour under Burnham squeezes Green territory

The housing push arrives at an uneasy moment for Polanski. While the Greens gathered in Brighton boasting a membership that has tripled over the past year, national polling has flattened. The party is wrestling with how to counter Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose succession has pulled Labour distinctly towards the left.

Since Burnham took office, Downing Street has embraced several causes the Greens previously championed without challenge from the governing party. Burnham has signalled openness to electoral reform, pursued closer arrangements with the European Union, introduced sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements, and revived a refugee resettlement programme.

Polanski maintains that Labour only acted because Green electoral pressure forced its hand. Yet his co-deputy leader, Rachel Millward, acknowledged ahead of the gathering that Burnham's administration now occupies "rhetorically, on a much more similar ground" to the Greens. That overlap threatens to sap the distinctiveness that helped the party secure hundreds of council seats and elect its fifth MP, Hannah Spencer, in Makerfield earlier this year.

The Holborn and St Pancras gamble

The conference schedule also collides directly with Polanski's own political future. He is contesting next week's by-election in Holborn and St Pancras, the central London constituency vacated by Sir Keir Starmer's exit from Parliament.

Rather than holding court in Brighton throughout the weekend, Polanski is urging delegates to leave the conference early and travel to London to knock on doors. Winning the seat would deliver the Greens their first parliamentary presence in the capital, but it requires wiping out a massive Labour majority from 2024. A poor showing would immediately raise questions within the party over whether Polanski overextended his reach just as Burnham closed the door on left-wing defectors.