Cornwall Council took on nearly 3,000 complaints from worried tenants in the five years to March 2024, with a national review highlighting a significant lack of councils taking rogue landlords to court, writes Local Democracy Reporter Lee Trewhela.

Public Interest Lawyers collected information from English and Welsh (and Cornish, of course) councils, finding that over 100 of them did not take any landlords to court between 2019/20 and 2023/24.

Cornwall Council stated it heard 2,940 complaints from tenants between April 2019 and March 2024.

In this time, the council oversaw four landlord prosecutions, which works out as fewer than one per year and slightly less than the national average of five per council. All four of the prosecutions took place before April 2022.

In each case, the defendant received a guilty verdict. Two landlords were prosecuted for failing to comply with an improvement notice, while one did not return a completed notice required under Section 16 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976.

One landlord faced prosecution under two charges – not complying with a Prohibition Order and failing to licence a house in multiple occupation (HMO) – while another was found guilty for illegal eviction. The number of annual complaints received by the council fluctuated, with a post-lockdown high of 706 in 2021/22.

Public Interest Lawyers sent a Freedom of Information request to every council in England and Wales to find out how many prosecutions had been pursued – 252 councils, or 80 per cent of the metropolitan, unitary, district, London or Welsh local authorities, responded within the time frame for a request; 115 (46 per cent) confirmed that there were no prosecutions at all from April 2019 to March 2024.

A further 49 only sought court action against a solitary landlord in the five-year period, meaning just under two-thirds of councils did not undertake a court prosecution of multiple landlords.

Some councils have argued that civil penalties, as well as formal warnings, have been sufficient in maintaining landlord compliance.

However, the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) learned earlier this year that less than half of the fines issued against rogue landlords between 2021 and 2023 had been collected.

Organisations protecting renters’ rights have urged the government to address issues facing renters with the Renters’ Rights Bill, which is in the process of being passed through Parliament.

The Renters’ Reform Coalition is a group of 20 leading organisations which have joined to lobby for changes to legislation affecting the private rented sector. They argue that the data collected by Public Interest Lawyers shows not an absence of willingness to prosecute landlords, but of ability to do so.

Tom Darling, director of the coalition, said: “These are worrying findings. The key problem councils face here is ultimately a lack of resources, after years of rising costs and shrinking budgets.

“We’ve called on the government to provide local authorities – who will have the crucial role of enforcing the forthcoming Renters’ Rights Bill – with the additional funding and guidance they need to protect renters from rogue landlords.”

A spokesperson for Cornwall’s unitary authority said: “Cornwall Council’s Private Sector Housing Team deals robustly with all complaints made against landlords and moves towards drawing on enforcement powers and sanctions as and where appropriate to do so in line with the council’s enforcement policy.

“In most cases, guided by the enforcement policy, our actions take the form of civil penalty notices and not prosecution in the courts.”

Link to findings: https://www.publicinterestlawyers.co.uk/personal-injury-claims/statistics-and-research-on-landlord-prosecutions-in-britain/