Two-thirds of English councils have prosecuted no landlords for offences related to standards in or the management of private rented housing over the last three years. 

The National Residential Landlords Association is warning that this failure to take action against the criminal minority brings the sector into disrepute and risks undermining further reform of the sector. 

The NRLA obtained the data via Freedom of Information Act requests from 283 local authorities across England. In the three years between 2018/2019 and 2020/21, 67% had not successfully prosecuted a landlord for offences related to standards in or the management of private rented housing. A further 10% had secured just one successful prosecution. 

Overall, just 20 local authorities were responsible for 77% of all successful prosecutions. The three local authorities with the highest number of prosecutions (Southwark, Birmingham and Hull) were responsible for 38% of all such action across England. Of these, Birmingham and Hull had no local landlord licencing scheme in place. 

Among those councils responding, just 937 successful prosecutions of criminal landlords had taken place over the past three years. This is despite government estimates in 2015 that there may be around 10,500 rogue landlords in operation. 

The new data follows research published earlier this year by the NRLA which showed that over the same three years, 53% of English councils had issued no civil penalties against private landlords.