Petition Introduce prison sentences for rogue landlords

At the moment, rogue landlords only face financial penalties if they breach licensing conditions or fail to make repairs. This is inadequate in comparison to the potential profits. The maximum penalty available for worst cases should be equivalent to that for theft, i.e. 7 years' imprisonment.

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Buy-to-let landlords are currently getting an average return on investment of nearly 9% (Daily Telegraph, 5 June 2015), but rogue landlords can multiply that several times over. Fines, generally limited to £5,000 or £20,000, are insufficient: this can be less than a month's income from a large property. If these landlords had simply stolen the money from their tenant victims, they would go to prison: why should they escape prison simply because they made their illegal gains through a lease?

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

32 signatures

Progress of the petition towards its next target: 32 of 10,000 signatures required to get a government response

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10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Date closed 18 May 2016
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