Tenants left living in squalor in Britain as landlords escape heavy fines

Mould and damp on the living room walls of a social housing flat in Weston Super Mare, Somerset. Photograph: Stephen Shepherd/The Observer

Leading private providers of social housing in Britain have been made to pay out only a few hundred pounds on average in financial penalties for severely mistreating tenants, the Observer can reveal.

An analysis of every decision made by the housing ombudsman, the primary regulator of social housing in Britain, shows that across the 2,907 rulings it made in the past three years, the average financial penalty for housing associations was just £445.