Labour has been accused of attempting to mislead voters after claiming it will “control private rents” if it wins a majority on Canterbury City Council.

The party’s Herne Bay branch has made the pledge in leaflets sent through residents’ doors across the town, despite the local authority having no power to introduce caps itself.

Currently, central government legislation determines private renters’ rights, tenancies and leases.

Cllr Simon Warley, who chairs the Herne Bay branch of Labour, concedes the most the council could do is “campaign” for central government for the controls.

“The control of private rents is something that would be done through national legislation from a Labour government,” he said. “We’d obviously campaign for that.

“Controlling private rents would also be achieved by solving the housing crisis – because there are so few properties lots of people are chasing a small number of available homes and that helps to push rents up.”

The flyer states a Labour-run council will “prioritise building council homes, control private rents and introduce tough standards to protect all tenants”.

However, the party’s manifesto promises to “campaign nationally” for caps on leases.

Labour’s leader in the local authority, Cllr Alan Baldock, believes the leaflets should have made this clearer.

“We wouldn’t be putting caps on rents - that’d be taking a headline from a leaflet and reading too much into it,” he said.

“What we’re pledging is to campaign nationally for rent controls. We should have said in the leaflet.”

Conservative councillor Neil Baker believes Labour is trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes by “making promises it can’t deliver”.

“When you drill into it, you can see it’s promising unicorns and moons on sticks,” he said.

“I think it’s quite outrageous that people standing for election – including those who have been around local politics for some time – deliberately muddy the waters just to try to grab votes.

“You can’t stand on the basis of making promises that, not only you can’t deliver at all but, you can’t deliver in your particular tier of government.”

Cllr Baker said the city council “speaks to the government constantly and has made representations on various issues”, but has not been lobbying for controls on private rents.

“Every level of government has its hands full dealing with everything that’s within its remit without thinking of other things,” he said.

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