Bristol Fair Renting Campaign

About the campaign

There are nearly 122,000 private renters in our city. We are a large community being impacted by a renting system that is not affordable, secure, or safe. Our campaign is led by renters across Bristol who have all been affected by this broken renting system. Our goal is to make our local renting system fair. We’ve united to build solidarity, identify solutions and fight together for change.

Our manifesto of demands for 2024

We are demanding that Bristol’s leaders tackle:

high and out-of-control rents
poor living conditions and lack of control for private renters
discrimination in private renting

Read our full manifesto

Read our 2021 launch manifesto

We are currently updating our manifesto, as several of our demands have been won through the Renters’ Rights Act.

We're done with feeling powerless. Are you?

Sign our manifesto

A campaigner pasting a 'take action' sign onto a wall.

Struggling with your own housing issues?

Read Shelter's online advice or visit your local hub

Latest activity

Share our social activity to make sure as many people as possible hear about our campaign!

Find us on Instagram
Find us on Facebook

Sign and share our manifesto

Demand Bristol’s political leaders fix private renting. Sign and share with other renters you think would support our mission.

Sign our manifesto

Get closer to the campaign

If you're a Bristol renter looking to get more involved, get in contact to join our group of renters leading the campaign.

Email us to join our campaign

From Avonmouth to Withywood, Bristol renters are uniting to fight for better rights.

The campaign so far

2026

A group of campaigners at the national housing demonstration. They are all standing together and are holding up banners and placards, which call for more social homes and homes for health not wealth . There is also a Bristol Fair Renting campaign banner being held up by members of the campaign.

We brought renters together locally to make a Bristol Fair Renting campaign banner and marched with over 5,000 people on the first national housing demonstration in a decade.

We also launched a ‘Rent Day’ campaign with Generation Rent to raise awareness of just how unaffordable rents in Bristol are. We mobilised our community to call on local politicians to fight for fair rents. So far, 27 local councillors have pledged support for rent controls.

2025

We called on West of England Metro Mayor candidates to champion renters. We met with Helen Godwin, Mayor for the West of England, who agreed that rent controls are logical.

Our supporters sent over 70 emails to local MPs calling on them to put rent controls on the national political agenda. And we also joined the national Homes For Us Alliance - coming together with other groups to work out how we can make rent controls a reality.

Previous years (2024-2020)

2024

We ran a hustings with other local housing groups, calling on election candidates to make pledges ahead of the general election. The MP for Bristol Central, Carla Denyer, was on board and started actively campaigning for rent controls. We also started running meet-ups for renters to come together as a community.

2023

We influenced the Living Rent Commission's recommendations on rent controls to make them stronger, and they were approved by the council in 2023. We also painted a huge community mural calling for rent controls.

2022

We influenced the council to include anti-discrimination clauses in new property licences. And, in response to our campaigning, the council set up a local Living Rent Commission to explore what rent controls could look like for Bristol. We sat on this to represent the views of local renters.

2021

We decided to do something about the problems we were facing and officially launched our campaign. Our first big action was to co-run a mayoral assembly with the community union ACORN. And we won commitments from Marvin Rees, the Mayor of Bristol, to lobby the government for rent control powers and tackle discrimination in renting.

2020

We started as a group of local renters sharing our stories. We were (and still are) facing unaffordable rents, poor conditions, insecurity, and discrimination. And yet, back then, politicians weren’t doing or saying much about these problems.

The campaign brought the local community together to paint a giant mural by the motorway making an urgent call for rent controls.