My mum came up with an idea to set up a national website where tenants can name landlords/agents who have treated them badly and share their stories, so others can avoid them and so landlords/agents can't get away with the same tricks all the time and have an incentive to improve their service. It would need to be regulated in some way but quite a good idea I thought.
There certainly needs to be something in place and enforced to prevent these things from happening repeatedly.
In other European countries regulations are very strict and are enforced. Landlords could never get away with the stuff they do here, or tenants for that matter!