I am sure many people will agree with the comments of Joanna Evans (The Argus, August 16) that it’s a good idea when she says it’s time to bring in a rent cap – a limit for what a private landlord can charge tenants in the private housing sector.

I have it on good authority from the older generation that there was a cap on private rents in the 1930s and that it worked well.

It was called “rent controls” and few private landlords pulled out of the rental market because of it.

However, a Conservative government got into power in the 1950s and swept away this legislation, leaving tenants once again at the mercy of free market forces.

Their excuse at the time was, considering that so much affordable social housing had been built since the end of the Second World War, rent controls were not needed for the poor.

Since the 1950s, this deregulation hasn’t worked.

If governments are bent on pushing the poor towards the private rental sector then a rent control (or cap) is very much needed to fix this social mess.

This issue isn’t going to go away. Rents must be set at an affordable level for tenants and acceptable to the landlord.

Ian Hunt, Pavilion Road, Worthing