The Fall and Rise of the Private Rented Sector in England

Abstract

The fall and rise of the private rented sector in England The private rented sector in England contracted in size continuously across much of the 20 century, from being the majority tenure at its start to the smallest before its end. It has been a particularly dynamic tenure over recent decades, with a period of substantial decline followed by a period of even stronger recovery. Data from the last five censuses of population have been used to explore the extent to which the size, geography and composition of the private rented sector may have altered. The 40 year period divides into distinct phases either side of 1991: the first two decades comprise the end of decline in private renting, and the following two decades a revival. Despite substantial fluctuations across this period, there were similarities in the characteristics of the private rented sector at its beginning and end, whilst in other respects the sector had evolved. Contextual background The history of the private rented sector in England over the 20 century is one of continual decline until the late 1980s, from which time it started to recover. There are complex and often debated reasons for these events, which have been discussed at length elsewhere (for example, Kemp, 2004; Crook and Kemp, 2011; Kemp, 2015). As the private rented sector (PRS) declined from being the mainstream tenure, it came to perform a number of specialised roles (Bovaird et al., 1985). These included relatively easy access and exit housing for the mostly young and mobile; a ‘traditional role’, housing often elderly people who might always have lived in the sector; employment-linked accommodation, such as for agricultural workers or caretakers; and a ‘residual role’, housing those unable to access owner occupation or social renting. An ‘escape-route’ function from social housing to facilitate movement to a better house or neighbourhood has also been identified (Kemp and Keoghan, 2001). This latter function is probably one example of a number of small, but important, ad hoc jobs the sector performs, such as stop-gap accommodation in between the sale and purchase of a home or as a result of relationship breakdown, or to move to an area with a better school (Rugg and Rhodes, 2008). Government statistics indicate that by 2013 there had been resurgence in the PRS to more than four million privately rented dwellings in England, or 20 per cent of the stock for the first time in decades more people were renting from a private rather than a social landlord (DCLG, 2015). In a tenure associated with a high level of ‘churn’, a higher proportion of people than indicated by static counts will rent from a private landlord at some stage of their lives. Analysis of the British Household Panel Survey, for example, found that 25 per cent of the original sample members had rented privately during the first 14 years of the Survey (Rhodes, 2006), a period during which the sector’s size ranged from nine to 12 per cent of the total dwelling stock (DCLG Live Table 104).