Campaigning tenant group Generation Rent has appointed Holly Williamson as its new chief executive, replacing Ben Twomey.

Williamson previously ran MP John Healey’s constituency office – who is now the new Chancellor. A private renter herself, the group says she brings a wealth of experience in policy, campaigning and law to the role. It highlights her extensive experience across campaigns, policy, Parliament and Government and adds that Williamson is committed to improving the lives of renters across the UK. She is also a trustee of Hopian, a charity supporting survivors of domestic violence.

A spokesman tells LandlordZONE: “Before joining Generation Rent, Holly spent almost a decade leading teams, developing campaigns, influencing policy and working with decision-makers to deliver change on some of the country’s biggest public policy challenges.”

Stance

Landlords will be interested to see whether Williamson will take a differing stance to her predecessor who quit the top job after three years. Twomey didn’t endear himself to private landlords and earlier this year, told The Guardian that the threat of mass sales from landlords “should be taken with a large pinch of salt” and argued that most landlords were able to absorb an increase in tax.

Williamson has already backed calls for rent controls and says: “The cost of renting is like a runaway train with no driver, leaving too many renters as passengers with no control over our lives. With another spike in inflation looming, Andy Burnham’s government can and must act urgently, by bringing in a limit on how much landlords can hike our rents.”

However, according to the i Paper, rent con­trols won’t be part of the government’s pack­age of cuts, with the policy not under act­ive con­sid­er­a­tion by offi­cials. It reports that Whitehall sources say Andy Burnham looks set to aban­don plans to intro­duce rent con­trols as part of his cost-of-liv­ing policy blitz fol­low­ing con­cerns that they would have a neg­at­ive impact on the private ren­ted sec­tor.

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