The Salvation Army, a well-known charity, has been accused of acting like “a rogue landlord” by leaving some of its private tenants living in substandard conditions.

It has been reported that the Christian organisation ignored repeated requests to improve hazardous conditions by its tenants in Hadleigh, Essex.

Tenants have complained of being subjected to years of living with hazards including fire risks, damp, and vermin infestations, an investigation by the Guardian and ITV News found.

The Salvation Army issued an “unreserved apology” after being presented with the investigation’s findings.

The charity says that it has now started the process of surveying the properties and renovating vacant homes as part of an urgent action plan.

The local council, Castle Point, said it had now served improvement notices on a number of properties in Hadleigh that are owned by Salvation Army, forcing the charity to act.

According to the tenants who took part in the investigation, the problems with the properties were first documented in late 2014.

It is claimed that in 2018, the charity left up to 40 tenants fearing that they would be evicted, instead of paying to correct the problems.

In 2019, a local environmental health officer at Castle Point council wrote to the Salvation Army and described the charity’s handling of the situation in Hadleigh as a “sordid mess”.

The letter said he had identified “significant housing disrepair in Salvation Army properties” in the borough including “category one and two hazards”.

Category one hazards are the most serious housing problems. They include risks of “death, permanent paralysis, permanent loss of consciousness, loss of a limb or serious fractures”.

The Guardian and ITV News reports that conditions within tenants’ homes have not improved since the council’s warning three years ago.

The length of time the Salvation Army failed to deal with the complaints has raised serious questions about the governance and conduct of one of the UK’s highest profile charities.

Steve Mackenzie, an independent fire safety expert, who inspected one property for the Guardian and ITV News, said that building was a “fire trap” for a number of reasons.

He explained: “The inadequate fire detection. There are no CO2 detectors. There is no separation of the roof from one flat to the other … We’ve also got an electrical system that has been condemned at some point. And the list goes on.”

He called the Salvation Army’s conduct towards its Hadleigh tenants “delinquent, negligent, [a] breach of legislation, criminally negligent”.

He added: “The defects we are seeing in statutory contraventions are unforgivable. It is not allowed and they are delinquent under law.”

A second expert, Jeff Charlton, managing director of the environmental health consultancy Building Forensics, inspected a different Salvation Army property in Hadleigh, and found mould on a wall next to the bed of an asthmatic child.

“All mould is a health risk,” he said. “There’s no real excuse. People are being made sick or their health is deteriorating living in this property. There is a responsibility under the landlord and tenant act that the landlord makes the home health and safety compliant … Of course [the landlord] is negligent.”

Rebecca Harris, the MP for Castle Point, said she had been in meetings with the Salvation Army over a number of years to try to bring all the properties up to a good condition.

She told The Guardian: “They kept making promises that failed to materialise. Ordinary members of the Salvation Army would be mortified to know how incompetent their properties department has been.

“The biggest fear for the tenants and myself was that they would claim the properties were beyond economic repair, knock them down and evict families. I kept pressing the Salvation Army to get on and do the work, but they’ve left the tenants waiting for them to get their act together, which has been incredibly stressful for them.”

The Salvation Army issued The Guardian with a statement in which Anthony Cotterill, the charity’s territorial commander, said: “The condition of these houses is unacceptable. It is clear that we let down the tenants of Seaview Terrace and Mount Zion and I am deeply sorry. As well as an unreserved apology, I would like to offer reassurance that for some months now we have been working on an urgent action plan to bring these properties up to the correct standard.

“Our tenants are right to be angry but with the help of our new property director, appointed in May 2021, we are confident that we are now taking urgent action to right these wrongs. Further senior appointments to manage planned works will also support the improvements process.”