Half of councils in England and Wales have not prosecuted a single rogue landlord in the past three years, despite a rise in the number of complaints from tenants, openDemocracy has found.
Local authorities received more than 314,000 complaints about private landlords and letting agents between 2018 and 2021.
It paints a picture of a regulatory system that is failing to keep vulnerable people safe from unscrupulous property bosses. One single mother in Nottingham was served an eviction notice after council officers decided to give her landlord “a chance” instead of taking legal action – even though they had failed to remedy dozens of safety hazards in her house.
