Two-thirds of councils in England have not prosecuted a single landlord in the past three years, despite receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints about unsafe or unlawful rental homes, new analysis shows.
Between 2022 and 2024, almost half of housing authorities failed to issue even one financial penalty, while more than a third took no formal enforcement action at all against rogue landlords operating in the private rented sector.
This inaction came despite tenants lodging roughly 300,000 complaints about unfit or hazardous accommodation over the same period.
Data obtained by the Guardian via freedom of information requests to 252 local authorities reveals the scale of the enforcement gap. Across those councils, just 640 landlords were prosecuted, and only 4,702 civil penalty notices (CPNs) were issued – a fraction of the complaints received.
