ESRC-funded research exposes how organised crime and slum landlords exploit vulnerable tenants through abuse, illegal evictions, and coercion
By Dr Julie Rugg
The private rented sector (PRS) accommodates around 20 per cent of all households in England. The PRS is generally regarded as a problematic sector within the housing market, and the introduction of the Renters’ Rights Act in 2025 seeks to improve tenant experience by increasing security of tenure and strengthening local authority enforcement action to improve property quality. For example, the Act expands the reach of Civil Penalty Notices (CPNs) in terms of the range of infractions that could be subject to a CPN, and the level of the fine. Non-compliant landlords face fines of up to £40,000 per offence.
However, recent ESRC-funded research has indicated that the Renters Rights Act may not be wholly effective in tackling landlord-perpetrated crime in the PRS. This research, now coming to a conclusion, brought together criminology and policing specialists, housing policy and housing law academics, and Safer Renting, a third sector charity working with marginalised tenants subject to landlord crime.
In 2020, Safer Renting and Julie Rugg collaborated on the report Journeys in the Shadow Private Rented Sector, which highlighted the range of criminal behaviours that Safer Renting staff routinely encountered in the course of their case work. Using this springboard, a larger, £1m research grant was secured from the ESRC to explore the issue in more detail.
The programme operated with major strands that explored: policing the sector and qualitative accounts from landlords of their own criminality; multi-agency enforcement and good practice; and housing justice and tenant experiences of landlord criminality, including an in-depth exploration of illegal eviction. The project deliberately focussed attention away from London and used Yorkshire and the Humber as a case study region. Engagement in the region and with practitioners more widely indicates that landlord-perpetrated crime is endemic in the market.
The research, published in four major grey reports, indicates that there are multiple modes of landlord criminality in the PRS. This includes criminality linked to organised crime groups. The PRS provides space and opportunity for cannabis farming and can facilitate modern slavery. The research also identified the operation of slum landlords, whose business model includes letting poor-quality property with no intention of investing in repairs or maintenance, and with no regard to tenant welfare. These landlords are fully conversant with the law and use techniques of evasion to prevent or deter local authorities pursuing prosecution. Letting agents can also be involved in different kinds of criminality, often evading prosecution through denying culpability – for example, blaming the landlord or the tenant for cannabis farms discovered in managed properties.
Cannabis farm in a rented property. Image supplied by Safer Renting staff attending a raid with the police in 2025.
The project undertook detailed exploration of local authority enforcement action, working with case-study local authorities to explore decision-making around prosecution. There are multiple obstacles to prosecution, including low staffing levels within private sector housing teams; an unwillingness to progress to prosecution because of limited expertise in housing law amongst local authority legal teams; and disincentives created by sentences that did not always reflect the severity of the harm caused by the landlord. Where local authorities had a stronger enforcement record, it was evident that a decision in favour of proactivity had been made at a higher strategic level that improved resources and skills at the front-line.
A further major obstacle was a lack of certainty around definitions of criminality. Findings suggest that defining ‘slum landlords’ as a criminal type creates a stronger imperative to prosecute by removing uncertainties around culpability.
The research also, for the first time, defined landlord-perpetrated tenant abuse as a type of criminal behaviour. Slum landlords are often able to retain tenants through coercive and bullying behaviours which can include trespass, threat and control of utilities, arbitrarily interrupting of supply. Further elements of exploitation include adding spurious fees to the rent and taking over a tenant’s welfare payments. Properties are often overcrowded. Many tenant types are at an enhanced risk of exploitation because they find it difficult to access rented property in the ‘mainstream’ market. For example, they may not pass standard credit checks because of low or fluctuating income, or they may have mental health problems, experience of the criminal justice system or be vulnerable because of their migrant status. These tenants are trapped in poor-quality properties because street homelessness is a likely alternative.
The programme of research also included the first major investigation into illegal eviction since 2000. The Protection from Eviction Act 1977 defines harassment and illegal eviction as criminal offences, but little resource is dedicated to prosecution. Local authorities do not routinely log the incidence of illegal eviction, which was a commonplace experience for the most marginal renters. These households could be subject to ‘lock-change’ eviction: the landlord changing the locks, simultaneously deprived the tenant of their home and – very often – of all their possessions. Police rarely intervene despite the criminality of the offence, and there was substantial evidence of officers arriving at the scene and supporting the landlord.
The research concluded that the PRS is ‘criminogenic’, in providing multiple opportunities and limited deterrence for criminal behaviour. The Renters’ Rights Act contributes to some reduction in criminogenic conditions by controlling access to the market through landlord registration. However, no measures are in place to improve the access to the mainstream market of excluded tenants who form the main demand group for ‘shadow’ rentals. Situational prevention supports the need for early-intervention enforcement: very often, abusive landlord behaviour is unchallenged until it concludes in an illegal eviction. Containing the harm of criminal landlordism requires local authorities to reach for harder enforcement measures more quickly, and by doing so control criminals’ access to their assets by using banning orders or interim management orders. Civil penalty notices are unlikely to remove the worst offenders from the market. Tackling criminal landlordism effectively requires strategic, proactive responses that encompasses a range of possible interventions.
The ESRC research team have, during the course of the project, built on networks and collaborations to ensure that the project’s findings are reaching the right practitioner audiences. These include local authority private sector housing teams that routinely enforce housing legislation and police at neighbourhood and specialist unit levels. Findings have also been circulated to the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with the aim of ensuring that application of the Renters’ Rights Act is informed by an understanding of how the shadow PRS operates.
This research was funded by the ESRC, grant ES/X001687/1