Media Spotlight: Dispatches: Landlords From Hell
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Presented by Jon Snow
With the UK set to become a nation of renters, it’s rich pickings for rogue landlords at the moment.
In Channel Four’s Dispatches: Landlords from Hell, Jon Snow investigated why the buoyant private rented sector is fuelling a boom in dodgy landlords.
The programme focussed on property agency the Meridian Foundation, a registered charity which predominantly deals with tenants on housing benefit.
Snow discovered all manner of horrors at the houses it lets out, from damp bathrooms to collapsed ceilings.
With 3.4 million people in the private rental sector in the UK and this figure is set to grow it’s the perfect time to highlight bad practices by landlords.
The programme started by looking at some examples of such practices as landlords threatening to beat up tenants who refuse to pay and evicting them with little notice.
Snow asked why nothing has been done to stop such actions and took his cause to housing minister Grant Shapps whose excuse was that a register for landlords would create a bureaucratic nightmare.
It’s amazing these practices continue in the 21st century. While anyone offering buy-to-let mortgages is subject to rigorous regulatory checks, it seems illogical that those renting out properties are not more strictly regulated.
Snow pointed out that in the last three years action has only been brought against a handful of landlords.
He even discovered a make-shift shanty town in London, where Indian immigrants are paying £40 a week to share a garden shed.
The show enlisted the help of Shelter to look at why so many people are being allowed to live in such conditions.
It concluded that a lack of action by local authorities and a rise in illegal immigration is to blame for landlords getting away with such practices.
Local authorities seem reluctant to take action against individuals, either because the scale of the problem is so great, or because they lack resources.
The programme’s title, Landlords from Hell, might have given the impression it would focus on more mainstream rogue practices among landlords. But it steered clear of fluffy examples of bad landlord behaviour that you might find in the higher end of the rental sector and was more a piece of investigative journalism. One of the saddest parts of the show focussed on an elderly couple who had lived in their home for 42 years but entered into a sale-and-rent-back agreement.
Soon their house was falling into disrepair for which the property agency blamed the couple. But the agency was just looking for an excuse to move them because they were paying such low rent.
Although the programme used shock tactics to demonstrate its point it would have also been good to show some more common examples of bad landlords. With increasing numbers of people having to turn to the rental sector because they can’t get a mortgage, it would have added to the programme to investigate bad practice against the less vulnerable as well.
Snow ended the programme by saying Dispatches will continue to investigate bad practice and will report back if it continues to find shoddy landlords. Judging from this programme, he will no doubt be able to collect enough material for a whole series.
Review by Natalie Thomas
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Readers' comments (1)
Anonymous | 13 Jul 2011 12:24 pm
i am a tenant of one of four houses that are not what i would call being properly maintained ,one of the tenants has just been evicted for refusing to pay rent,his reason was the central heating boiler didnt work properly,three people have said they used to fill pans of water to have a bath ,also the septic tank has a break in it , the cooker has been condemed for last 3 tenants and is probabley going to be rented again .good excuse for an undercover tenant ,also very bad damp ,gets worse but not enough room to put it all hope to speak to you.
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