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

Exclusive: housing association payouts over failures to fix life-threatening mould and damp average only 445

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.