An suburban area of outer London has been revealed as the area where landlords are most likely to be fined for rule breaches or face a Rent Repayment Order (RRO) secured by tenants.

Waltham Forest in North London, which stretches from Chingford down to the Hackney Marshes, pursued fines or prosecutions relating to 104 properties during 2023 and 2024 and during the same period 13 renters in the borough successfully claimed rent back from landlords who had broken the law, according to data held by the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber).

Generation Rent, which has collated the data, says that of the other 17 London boroughs that submitted data, 120 private rented properties were subject to fines or prosecutions in 2023 and 2024 and that there were 139 successful applications for RROs in those boroughs.

More prosecutions

The lobbying organisation points out that there are likely to have been many more prosecutions, fines and RROs across London within boroughs that don’t report data.

Generation Rent wants such fines to increase when the looming Renters’ Rights Bill goes live later this year. It is calling on the government to amend the Bill to make landlords liable for a RRO as soon as they fail to register on the database.

“The new private rented sector database should give tenants far more information about the property they plan to rent and the person they plan to rent from, helping them make informed decisions,” a spokesperson says.

“But, if landlords don’t have an incentive to join the database, it risks being useless for tenants.

“The threat of having to pay back many months’ of rent should spur landlords into registering on the new database, but as things stand, only cash-strapped councils will have responsibility for making checks.

“That means the government risks seeing large numbers of landlords dodging the rules and undermining the new protections the reforms are designed to provide tenants.”

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