Are Rogue Landlords as Common as Claimed?

Tenant campaign groups and housing charities continuously rail against private landlords and deplorable living standards, but do they have evidence to support their claims?

The media is full of horror stories about greedy landlords who let their tenants live in squalid homes.

Any sensible onlooker will agree that some landlords take advantage of tenants and offer despicable homes for them to rent.

Then, not all tenants are angels, either.

Around 500,000 complaints of rogue landlords and poor living conditions were made in five years.

Tiny number of landlords prosecuted

Those complaints generated 1,267 prosecutions, according to data compiled by researchers at the legal collective Public Interest Lawyers.

On average, that's one prosecution for 335 tenants' complaints to their local councils.

Comparing those figures to the number of private landlords and buy-to-let homes across England gives a clearer picture of how bad the private rented sector is for tenants.

According to the latest government data from the English Housing Survey, the market covers some 2.82 million private landlords who own 4.4 million rented homes.

Factoring 1,267 prosecutions with 2.8 million landlords shows 0.04 per cent have faced prosecution in the past five years.

No prosecutions launched by half of councils

The data also shows that out of 317 local authorities in England, 115 failed to issue any landlord prosecutions in the past five years, while 49 councils had only launched one prosecution.

The Renters' Reform Coalition, a collective of 20 organisations lobbying for changes to the law affecting private tenants and landlords, argues that the lack of prosecutions shows not an absence of willingness to prosecute landlords but an ability to do so.

Tom Darling, director of the Renters' Reform Coalition, said: "These findings are worrying. Councils lack resources after years of rising costs and shrinking budgets.

"The government should provide local councils- who will have the crucial role of enforcing the forthcoming Renters' Rights Bill - with the additional funding and guidance they need to protect renters from rogue landlords."

Nine landlords were prosecuted in Croydon, South London, and 11 in Redbridge, East London, after each received more than 11,000 complaints from tenants.

How bad are living conditions?

Liverpool City Council received the most complaints--19,500 in five years--followed by Croydon (11,762), Cardiff (11,509), and Redbridge (11,488).

The 2022-23 English Housing Survey stated that almost 80 percent of renters considered making a complaint about their living conditions. Almost half of the private renters who complained to their landlord were unhappy with the response, while only 28 percent felt satisfied with how their complaint was handled.

The survey added that 21 percent of privately rented homes failed the decent homes standard, compared with 14 percent of privately owned homes and 10 percent of social housing.

The number of homes of all tenures failing the test has steadily decreased since 2011, when 35 percent of privately rented homes were deemed non-decent.

The survey also recorded that some 9 percent of privately rented homes had serious damp issues.