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Landlords accuse councils of doing too little to crackdown on rogues

Over half of local authorities in England have not issued any civil penalties against rogue or criminal landlords in the last three years according to a new survey.

Since April 2017 councils across England have been able to issue civil penalties of up to £30,000 for a range of housing offences. Income received can be re-invested by local authorities to help finance further enforcement against criminal operators who cause harm to tenants and give private renting a bad name. 

Despite this, the results of Freedom of Information requests from the National Residential Landlords Association show that between 2018/19 and 2020/21, only 130 local authorities in England out of 275 replying to the survey (47 per cent) had issued any civil penalties. 

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Most had used only a handful with 71 per cent of all civil penalties issued by just seven per cent of the local authorities. 

Of the 40 per cent of councils that had issued civil penalties, they had issued between just one and five over the past three years.

In total, fewer than 3,200 civil penalties were issued over the last three years by the local authorities responding to the survey. 

This is despite ministers suggesting during the passage of the legislation to introduce them that there may be 10,500 rogue landlords in operation.

 

Commenting on the results of the survey, Chris Norris, director of policy and campaigns at the NRLA, states: “Our findings show that most councils are failing to use all the tools available to them to tackle rogue and criminal landlords.

“By failing to apply appropriate sanctions to punish wrongdoing, councils are weakening the principle of deterrence which underpins the civil penalties regime.

“We are calling on all councils to ensure they are making full and proper use of the powers they have to tackle those landlords who cause misery to tenants and bring the sector into disrepute.

“The government’s plans to reform the private rented sector due later this year will mean nothing if changes are not properly enforced.”

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    Don't disagree but why are Councils not similarly criticised for not helping tackle rogue tenants?

    Rogue tenants harm ALL decent tenants and landlords with very limited means of redress whereas rogue landlords only harm their own tenants who have plenty of avenues of help available to them.

  • girish mehta

    Just a money making scheme and excuse
    To fleece the landlords. You cannot improve housing stock by punishing good landloard , encouraging bad tanents
    Councils and tenants have enough powers
    To find and report bad housing and rouge landlords

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    There ''MAY'' be 10500 rogue landlords ? where have they plucked that figure from ? Could it be that councils have not issued many criminal penalties against rogue landlords because there not as many rogue landlords out there as some would like us to think that there are ?

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    You're a rogue landlord.

     
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    Even if you report rogue landlords to their local Council, the Council are not interested!

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    Amazing only yesterday in one of articles LL got huge fine for various breaches, one was because of ASB by Tenants causing mayhem several complaints by neighbours etc, yet no action taken by Council on the Tenants but the opposite they supported the Tenants and said they were advising them how to avoid LL evicting them,
    square that one.

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    THe NRLA represents approx 85k landlords out of 4.3 million. I dropped out of them because they werre turning innto a lobbying system AGAINST landlords.

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    • 04 August 2021 10:36 AM

    Cracking down on rogue landlords and tenants, too much of a hard work for those lazy councils. Much easier to target the honest hard working landlords with all sorts of fees, rules and taxes.

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    Why you hiding your name then... We all know who are you

     
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    But then are you really John Smith or are you hiding ?

     
    Ferey Lavassani

    His real name is John Thomas. Older guys know what "John Thomas" is !!! For those who do not know what "John Thomas" is, you find it in your underpants.

     
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    My name is actually John Smith. We all know kilo is paul barrett..

     
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    “I’m Paul Barrett”

     
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    Rogue tenants???? 11k rent arrears still allowed to sit in my house??

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    And that’s ok to the authorities! No wonder so many of us want out.

     
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    I don’t believe the article LL’s are saying no such thing, telling Councils to crack down on fellow LL’s my foot, at a time when PSH is already under attack from all angles based on lies, they don’t give us much credit telling us rubbish like that to suit their own agenda.
    Come on now folks no in-fighting please we have enough on our plate don’t loose sight of the ball that’s exactly what they want.
    We are street wise enough to know its the ruination of any business so don’t play into their hands.

  • George Dawes

    Councils are only good at sending out bills , anything useful forget it

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    Yes agree sending out Bills & looking at screens, can’t do their own job or clean the Street nor have a program to empty road gullies. In west London virtual all blocked, every time it rains ponding all over the place everyone knows this but no action taken just look at it, as a result drainage pipes blocked as well, while their modern machinery sit idle at depot, (people had to do it years ago by hand with ladles). They must want people in Basements to get Flooded and they do as well as Road damage costing billions and they have put themselves in charge of us.

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