A day after the political story was who holds which department, today’s stories are about what those departments and their opposite numbers actually do next: a confirmed tax cut sitting alongside an unconfirmed rent freeze, two London boroughs quietly extending licensing over most of their rental stock, a tax deadline sixteen days out that a quarter of affected landlords haven’t touched, and the fire service telling the department in charge of building safety that its own draft rules don’t go far enough.
A £45 VAT cut is confirmed. A rent freeze still isn’t — but it hasn’t been ruled out either
Andy Burnham’s first policy announcement as Prime Minister landed at his first cabinet meeting on 21 July: VAT on household electricity bills drops from 5% to 0% from 1 October, for six months, expected to take around £45 off the average annual bill, at a cost to the Exchequer of roughly £850 million in 2026/27, according to reporting on the announcement. Burnham framed it plainly: he wants to “be a cost-of-living government, getting that cost of living down.” The stated funding source is the cancellation of the previous government’s digital ID scheme, though estimates of what that scheme would actually have cost range from £600 million to the £1.8 billion the OBR previously modelled — former minister Darren Jones was quick to note the government “will have to set out how it will pay for its new policies” at the next budget.
My read: a genuine tax cut is still a tax cut, but treat the arithmetic behind it with the scepticism it deserves. A scheme that might have cost anywhere between £600 million and £1.8 billion is not a reliable way to fund an £850 million commitment, and the gap between those numbers is exactly the kind of thing that turns up as an unfunded pressure at the next fiscal event.
The story with more direct relevance to this readership is what Burnham hasn’t ruled out. Asked on 20 July whether rent freezes were part of the same cost-of-living package, he told reporters “we are looking at all of those things,” as HuffPost reports. The NRLA’s Ben Beadle didn’t wait for a formal announcement to respond, warning via LandlordZone that “rent controls would choke off supply in the private rented sector, making it harder to meet the prime minister’s welcome ambition to end rough sleeping,” and pointing out that rent increases have already fallen by two-thirds over the past two years as supply has improved.
Nothing is confirmed yet, and I wouldn’t plan around a rumour. But if you’re weighing whether to sell a rental into this year’s soft sales market or hold it, a genuine rent freeze changes that calculation immediately — model what it would do to your numbers now, rather than working it out from scratch if a fuller package follows.
Greenwich wants to license 70% of the borough; Ealing wants five more years of its own scheme
Two live consultations landed this week that between them capture where landlord licensing in London is heading. Greenwich Council is consulting until 12 October on expanding its selective licensing scheme from 5 wards to 18 — around 70% of the borough — with councillor Joshua Ayodele saying “a recent review has identified 12 additional wards we believe should be covered,” per LandlordZone’s report. Since early 2025 the council has inspected 622 licensed properties and resolved 2,103 hazards. Separately, Ealing is consulting until 24 September on a five-year extension to its additional HMO licensing scheme, which otherwise expires in April 2027; the council has issued 28 civil penalties for unlicensed HMOs and brought 56 properties into compliance since April 2025.
Neither of these is an isolated local decision. Since December 2024, councils have been able to introduce licensing across their entire private rented sector without central government sign-off, provided they run a 10-week consultation — and the Renters’ Rights Act has since raised the maximum civil penalty for a licensing offence to £40,000, with rent repayment orders now reaching back two years. Licensing is quietly becoming the default state for London rental property, not an exception a landlord might get lucky and avoid.
If you let property anywhere in Greenwich or Ealing, don’t wait for the scheme to go live before checking your position — use the council’s postcode checker now, because a portfolio spread across a few wards can easily end up part licensed and part not. And if you own further afield in London, treat this as the pattern rather than the exception: assume your borough is heading the same way and check its consultation page before it becomes a launch date you missed.
Sixteen days to Making Tax Digital’s first real deadline, and a quarter of affected landlords haven’t signed up
The first quarterly filing deadline under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax falls on 7 August, covering income from 6 April to 5 July, and it applies to landlords and sole traders with qualifying income over £50,000 — more than 259,000 landlords, including 118,000 whose only qualifying income is property rental, according to LandlordZone’s report. A poll of 500 sole traders and landlords by business platform Tide found one in four hadn’t yet signed up, with the South East among the worst-registered regions. Xeinadin’s Barry Soraff expects “a large number of unadvised taxpayers that haven’t yet signed up,” and warns the more likely failure mode isn’t missing the deadline outright but “submitting incorrect data because they are inexperienced bookkeepers.”
HMRC is taking a lenient first year — no penalty points for a late quarterly update until the scheme beds in — which is exactly the kind of grace period that encourages people to leave it until the second or third quarter to sort out software and process. That instinct is the wrong way round: the point of year one's leniency is to let you get the habit wrong safely, not to defer starting it.
If your rental or self-employment income cleared £50,000 on your 2024/25 return, don’t wait for an HMRC letter to confirm it applies to you. Pick MTD-compatible software and get one quarter’s bookkeeping done properly before 7 August, even if the habit feels like overkill this early — it’s considerably cheaper to fix now than after three quarters of guesswork.
Fire chiefs say evacuation lifts should be sized to residents, not roof height
The government’s review of Approved Document B proposes requiring two evacuation lifts in blocks of flats 18 metres or taller, aligning with the high-risk building regime threshold and the second-staircase rules already coming into force this September. The National Fire Chiefs Council disagrees with pegging the requirement to height at all: as Inside Housing reports, the NFCC argues elevators should be provided based on residents’ access needs rather than a building height classification, warning the 18-metre line “risks suggesting that smaller buildings can comply with the rules even in cases where some people, including disabled people, may not have a safe way out.” The NFCC’s Dave Russel put the principle bluntly: “buildings should be suitable for the people who live in them, rather than people having to be suitable for buildings.”
This is the same structural problem that runs through most post-Grenfell building safety law: a single number draws a hard regulatory line, and everything under it gets treated as inherently lower-risk by default. The NFCC’s point is the right one — risk correlates with who is in the building and how they would actually get out, not with a threshold chosen to match an unrelated regime. The consultation closed on 17 June, so this is now a live disagreement between the fire service and the department, not a settled position.
If you manage a residential block under 18 metres with any resident who might need assistance to evacuate, don’t wait for that argument to resolve itself in guidance. Commission an access and evacuation review now — the eventual rule change, whichever way it lands, will ask you to have already done the thinking the NFCC says shouldn’t depend on a tape measure.
What I’d actually do
- Deciding whether to sell or hold a rental this year? A rent freeze is still speculative — don’t act on the rumour, but model what one would do to your numbers so a formal announcement doesn’t force a rushed decision.
- Letting property in Greenwich or Ealing? Check your licensing status against the council’s postcode checker now, not when the new scheme goes live.
- Landlord or letting agent anywhere else in London? Assume your borough is heading toward full licensing and check its consultation page before it becomes a launch date you missed.
- Rental or self-employment income over £50,000 on your 2024/25 return? Confirm your Making Tax Digital registration and get one quarter’s bookkeeping done properly before 7 August.
- Managing a block under 18 metres with any resident who might need help to evacuate? Commission an access and evacuation review now rather than waiting for Approved Document B to settle the argument for you.
If any of this touches your own plans — an access and evacuation review for a block you manage, or a building survey ahead of a purchase or sale — the practice offers building surveys across the South East. Get in touch.
Small print. General commentary, not advice for your specific circumstances — regulations, schemes and deadlines change, and your property is not the average property. Sources linked were accurate when read on 22 July 2026.