Local councils guilty of 'softly, softly approach' to rogue landlords

Councils are taking a “softly, softly” approach to rogue landlords, with only about a quarter of complaints regarding substandard housing leading to inspections, it has emerged.

On Tuesday MPs voted down an amendment to the housing bill which would have forced landlords to ensure homes were fit for habitation, with the government arguing that councils already had adequate power to deal with problem property owners.

However, research carried out for Labour MP Karen Buck reveals councils are not using the powers they have.

A survey of 120 local authorities in England found that while councils received 51,916 complaints about poor living conditions – including cold, damp and overcrowding – housing officers only inspected 14,043 homes. The figures, which cover 2013, show housing officers were four times more likely to react informally to complaints by sending a letter or making a phone call rather than issuing a legal notice. On average councils prosecuted fewer than one landlord a year each.

The report reveals a mismatch between the number of potentially life-threatening hazards councils recorded during inspections and the number of notices they served. While inspectors identified 4,301 so-called category one hazards, such as excess cold and fire risk, councils only took enforcement action on only 3,550 occasions.

The private rented sector is now the second largest tenure in England. Around 4.4 million households rent – more than double the number in 1996. But as the sector grows, so does concern over some of the properties being let.

Buck, whose private members bill to ensure rented homes are fit for human habitation was talked out by Conservative backbenchers, said it was alarming that there was such a low level of enforcement in the private rented sector. “Far too few of the landlords that let grossly substandard properties can expect to have tough enforcement against them,” she said.

She added that the private rented sector was growing and was increasingly used to house low-income families and homeless people – but housing officers lacked the resources to protect vulnerable tenants. “The more vulnerable people that go into the private rented sector the more urgent the need for more resources to protect them,” she said.

The author of the report, Stephen Battersby, a housing consultant, acknowledged that resources were a factor but said local authorities were too cautious. “Taking a softly, softly approach to landlords does nothing to discourage those who are undermining the more responsible landlords. It is a strategy that has failed.”

He added: “If a council finds a category one hazard then the very least they should do is serve a hazard awareness notice. It they don’t then it is a breach of their statutory duties under the Housing Act.”

‘Enforcement is a last resort’

In October, new laws came into force to prevent landlords carrying out revenge evictions following complaints. But tenants are only protected if councils serve improvement notices. “Just a letter from the local authority will not stop these evictions. If councils continue their softly, softly approach it won’t do anything to prevent retaliatory evictions,” Battersby said.

Similarly, councils will not be able to make use of new powers in the housing and planning bill to ban the worst the landlords and recover rent unless they take more enforcement action.

Battersby, who has carried out the survey for the past three years, said enforcement activity had remained at around the same level since 2011.

“While it is a good thing that this report indicates no great drop off in enforcement activity, that still remains very low by comparison with the scale of the problems in the private rented sector,” he said.

The Local Government Association said councils took complaints seriously, but that enforcement was a last result. “The private rented sector is growing and, with limited resources and competing funding pressures, councils are working hard to ensure that complaints from tenants are prioritised and dealt with appropriately,” a spokesperson said. “Some may be resolved without the need for inspection, and enforcement is a last resort when all other options fail.”

A list of convicted landlords, published by the Guardian and Environmental Health News in 2015, revealed 2,006 convictions between 2006 and 2014 resulted in fines of just £3m – less than £1,500 for each conviction.

North London landlord Katia Goremsandu, who used a sticker to disguise a faulty fire alarm and left tenants living in damp and freezing homes, topped the list. She was convicted seven times and fined a total of £16,565.

Research by the Building Research Establishment in 2015 found that 8.4m homes in England have a significant hazard. The annual cost to the NHS of these hazards is thought to be around £2bn in England and £2.5bn for the UK as a whole.

Buck said tenants should be given the right to sue over uninhabitable conditions because enforcement levels were too low overall. “Some local authorities do this very well, but there is a lack of consistency. We need to complement what local authorities do with a power for tenants.”

It is understood that amendments may be tabled to the government’s controversial housing and planning bill, giving tenants the right to sue, when the legislation passes through the House of Lords.

A DCLG spokesman said the government was determined to crack down on rogue landlords. “We have brought in legislation to protect tenants from being evicted, provided £6.7m of funding and introduced selective licensing so councils can target the areas with the worst problems.

“Furthermore, the housing bill strengthens councils’ powers including enabling them to blacklist landlords who have been convicted of serious offences and seeking banning orders for the most prolific offenders.”

‘Too indulgent’

In 2015 a special housing tribunal, which deals with appeals from landlords, took Southwark council to task for being “too indulgent in its dealings” with a landlord who had rented out a cold, fire-risk, eight-bedroom house, in which some of the tenants had to go through a shower room to get to their bedrooms. The tribunal rejected the landlord’s appeal but said it was a concern that the council had “spent quite so long negotiating … on the basis of informal schedules of works”.

In 2013 another housing tribunal found Wansdworth council had taken more than 20 months to take the formal action against a landlord who was renting out a cold, overcrowded, mouse-infested house with dangerous eclectics and an inadequate fire detection system.