According to a major report published by the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) 740,000 households are living in unsafe rental homes with serious problems such as rat infestations and damp. The CAB says landlords are raking in £5.6 billion a year for properties classed in the most severe category, a figure that includes £1.3 billion in housing benefit.
Serious Issues in Private Rental Sector says CAB
The CAB highlights a number of serious issues in the worst housing stock. It says 8% of private rented homes have serious damp problems, 6% are very cold and 16% are physically unsafe, compared to 6% of social housing. Despite these problems, tenants are paying on average £157 per week.
The government has given local authorities powers to tackle the problem of rogue landlords but the CAB doesn’t think it is doing enough:
“The government has rightly said it wants to tackle the country’s housing crisis – it must make targeting dodgy landlords, giving tenants better rights and driving up standards a major part of that effort.”
The NLA Responds
The National Landlords Association (NLA), citing statistics from the English Housing Survey, has issued a statement in response to the CB report.
“What this [the English Housing Survey] shows is that private housing is far from the CAB’s assertion of a market that is ‘failing systematically to deliver what consumers want’. Those who suffer at the hands of the criminal and negligent minority do so because of widespread failure of local councils to commit resources to enforcing the laws that already exist against poor landlords and criminal standards, and because of the failure of successive governments to incentivise the building of much needed homes that would relieve the pressure on the whole housing market.”
