"Selling squalor”

Since 2010, the total number of households renting privately has increased by 1.2 million – more than a third – as a fall in the number of social homes and rocketing house prices leave millions of people trapped in the private-rental sector. While local councils and social housing landlords are required to keep their homes in a good condition, regulations on private landlords are fewer and harder to enforce. 

Dan Wilson Craw, director of campaign group Generation Rent, said: “While decency standards have become the norm across the social rented sector in the past 20 years, more people have found themselves with no option but to rent from private landlords, where there is a greater risk of living in poor conditions. 

Almost a third of private rented homes in England fail basic health and safety standards.

Landlords renting out homes over the next five years, will receive more than £12bn in housing benefits – enough money to have built more than half a million new homes.

£2.5bn currently goes every year to landlords who are renting out properties in a “non-decent” condition: the Government’s benchmark for what constitutes an unacceptable quality of accommodation. To be classed as non-decent, a home must have inadequate heating, outdated sanitation, be in a state of serious disrepair or be unsafe, for example due to a dangerous boiler, vermin infestation or faulty wiring.

The Independent revealed last month that 1.4 million properties, are currently substandard, while 17 per cent contain the most dangerous type of safety hazard. The landlords that own them are continuing to profit from vast sums of public money. Spending on housing benefit has soared by £4bn since 2010, and now stands at £24bn a year, of which 36 per cent (£8.8bn) goes to the UK’s 1.75 million private landlords. Some of the rise in spending is a direct result of private rents increasing by an average of 22 per cent since 2010, meaning tenants are having to rely more and more on the state for financial support.

Housing benefit going to private renters has more than doubled in the last 10 years, from £3.7bn to £8.8bn. The Treasury forecasts it will rise to £9.4bn by 2021-22, despite Government ministers making 13 separate cuts to housing benefit since 2010, in an attempt to stop costs spiralling.

Last year, ministers rejected an amendment to make it a legal obligation for landlords to ensure their properties are “fit for human habitation”. They have also consistently refused to introduce licensing of all private landlords, and have clamped down on local councils who want to introduce their own licensing schemes.

A third (£827m) of all housing benefit going to rogue landlords is spent in London, while a further £399m is in the South East. Those in the North-west receive £351m, but in other regions the figure is much lower: for example, £83m in the East Midlands.

Campaigners accused rogue landlords of “profiteering by selling squalor”.