Dispatches

In this undercover investigation, Jon Snow reports on the return of the slum landlord in 21st-century Britain. At a time when more people than ever are having to rent privately, unable to get on the property ladder, Dispatches reveals the shocking conditions in which tenants are forced to live.

Dispatches sends an undercover reporter to work for a rogue property empire in the north of England. He reveals a world of forced evictions, slum properties in dangerous condition, and routine bullying of tenants. Jon confronts the man raking in millions while his tenants suffer.

Dispatches also exposes an extraordinary new phenomenon: thousands of people living in illegal sheds, transforming parts of London into slums. A second undercover reporter lives in a squalid, illegal shed in London, paying £40 a week rent to another rogue landlord.

Dispatches lifts the lid on a world where unscrupulous landlords are exploiting the most vulnerable people in society and getting away with it.

August 2011:

Since the programme has gone out, the Charity Commission has opened an inquiry into housing charity, the Meridian Foundation, exposed in a recent Channel 4 Dispatches undercover investigation.

Meridian's property empire extends across greater Manchester and the north west of England. It has a turnover of hundreds of thousands of pounds with much of that money from the taxpayer in the form of Housing Benefit.

A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission confirmed it had received 25 complaints about the charity after the programme was broadcast.