‘Many' council enforcement teams do not have the resources and capacity to proactively tackle poor standards in the private rented sector, the Local Government Association has said.
More than 100 local authorities have not prosecuted any rogue landlords at all in half a decade.
Freedom of Information Act requests found that 115 councils in England and Wales – or 46% of the 252 respondents – confirmed there were no prosecutions from April 2019 to March 2024.
A further 49 councils only sought court action against a single landlord in the five-year period, meaning just under two-thirds (164) did not undertake a court prosecution of multiple landlords.
According to Public Interest Lawyers, which carried out the research, there were more than 1,260 reported prosecutions across the five-year period, working out at around one per 335 complaints the councils received from concerned tenants.
