Ealing in top three London boroughs for housing complaints, new data shows

Image: Ealing Council offices

Ealing in top three boroughs with most housing complaints along with Redbridge and Croydon

Ealing has some of the highest numbers of housing complaints in London, clocking up 7,764 complaints from tenants over a five year period.

According to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by publicinterestlawyers.co.uk, councils in England and Wales received almost half a million complaints about landlords and housing conditions in the years 2019/20 to 2023/24, but the councils only took 1,285 rogue landlords to court.

Some councils brought no prosecutions at all and have argued that civil penalties, as well as formal warnings, have been sufficient in maintaining landlord compliance. However, the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) have reported separately that less than half the fines issued against rogue landlords between 2021 and 2023 had been collected, suggesting that bad landlords get away with neglecting tenants or actively mistreating them a lot of the time.

The complaints documented by Public Interest Lawyers covered issues such as housing disrepair, overcrowding, harassment and illegal eviction. Jae Vail, a spokesperson for the London Renters Union, said:

“Tenants face an epidemic of hazardous housing in this country, but when we report safety concerns to our local authorities, our complaints often go ignored. Many councils lack both the resources and the political will to hold landlords accountable.”

Ealing’s record “appalling” say Liberal Democrats

Cllr Gary Malcolm

In London, councils received more than 750 complaints per year from tenants. The Liberal Democrat opposition said:

“Ealing Council had the most housing complaints in the year of 2023/2024 in London.  It had 2,273 complaints in one year.  Which is truly appalling!

Not only do they receive a lot of complaints from private landlords, but they are not good landlords themselves, the Lib Dems say. A survey of local authority tenants in LB Ealing this summer showed:

“about half of tenants were dissatisfied with the repair service due to slowness, most tenants felt ignored and so did not want to engage with the Council.  The public sector tenants see it as a waste of time.”

Councillor Gary Malcolm, Leader of the Opposition in Ealing, and Liberal Democrat councillor for Southfield ward in Chiswick, said:

“Labour-run Ealing Council are so shocking at managing its housing and how landlords act, causing huge problems for tenants. The super-huge number of complaints in recent years shows that this area of the council needs to be ripped up and reformed so that residents who are tenants get a better deal from landlords in Ealing.”

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The information Public Interest Lawyers found out showed that over the five year period Croydon had received the most complaints about landlords (11,762). Rebridge came second with 11,488 complaints, then Ealing with 7,764.

During that period LB Ealing had only brought three prosecutions. Cllr Gary Malcolm said:

“The almost zero number of prosecutions shows that the council is failing a very large number of residents. If the council were more effective with advice and mediation then there would not be this many problems in the borough.”

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