A Liverpool tower block that had more housing prosecutions in 2017 than any other building was 80% owned by international investors, some of whom were banking publicly funded rents while subjecting tenants to potential danger from hazardously low temperatures.

Mill View tower, a 16-storey former council-owned high rise in Toxteth, attracted 13 prosecutions last year for Elite Property Management and Lettings Ltd, a local firm that was managing 13 of the flats. The flats had cost around £60,000 each in 2013 and were all rented to residents claiming housing benefit. The company was prosecuted for licensing offences.

The discovery of the building’s story – described as “shocking” by two local MPs – has prompted calls for some landlords to have their properties seized and housing benefit rental payments withheld.

When environmental health officers inspected the block in April 2016, 11 out of the 13 flats that were later the focus of the prosecutions were owned by overseas investors – based as far away as Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Malaysia.

In total, about 80% of the block was owned by international investors, with only 12 of the tower’s 64 flats UK-owned, when the inspectors called.

The investments were generating around 8% gross annual return, before service fees and upkeep, much of that provided by housing benefit payments. While much of the Mill View block has now been renovated, around one-fifth of the flats have still to have their heating upgraded, as tenants prepare to face the third winter since the issue was discovered.

The investigations by the council discovered “hazards of excess cold”, and showed that Elite had failed to obtain licences on the properties it was letting on behalf of its international clients.

Elite was prosecuted 13 times for the licensing offences, giving the tower the most convictions under the Housing Act of any building in England and Wales last year, according to freedom of information requests made by the Guardian and ITV News.

Frank Field, the independent MP for nearby Birkenhead and chairman of the work and pensions committee, said: “It is deeply shocking and depressing isn’t it? I think it is another example of the weak underbelly of globalisation, where the government is defenceless in trying to defend tenants.”

Field said some landlords should have their property confiscated: “This is not just an isolated case. We have therefore got to build up an armoury to protect tenants in the weakest position. That includes withholding housing benefit from landlords and withdrawing their right to own and manage the property. Is it so shocking that these people should lose control over their property?”

Dame Louise Ellman, the Labour MP who represents the constituency in which Mill View is located, said: “It’s shocking. It needs some kind of national legislation to stop this taking place.”

Joe Beswick, head of housing at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, described the fact that housing benefit has become an international investment opportunity, offering guaranteed returns, as absurd.

“The offshoring of the private rented sector is just another layer of absurdity,” he said. “From a relatively stable housing system where the government provided homes for people that couldn’t access them through the market … we’ve now gone to an unregulated system where rents are much higher because UK property has become such an attractive asset to international investors.”

Beswick added: “A lot of those rents are finding their way into offshore accounts with, presumably, a higher level of tax avoided on taxpayers’ money.”

Mill View, he said, proved that the involvement of international investors in the UK property market – and the problems it had caused – were not confined to London.

“The worst thing about it is that while the money is being ploughed in, it is not in any way productive. Investors’ money is not being used to build more affordable homes, it is just being used to buy existing assets. It just increases the competition for homes and increases the cost of homes, with the people of the UK ending up with more expensive houses and no increase in the supply of houses.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Darren Sharkey. Photograph: Guardian/ITV News

Darren Sharkey, the director of Elite, claimed that he did not feel he needed a licence and that the licensing system penalised good landlords but had been unsuccessful in removing “very many rogue landlords”.

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He said: “The licence fine had nothing to do with [the] heating upgrade. There have been lots of other poor conditions in the building and there still needs to be further improvements, but again we have worked tirelessly to improve these issues, which has been borne out by the vast improvements in [the] condition of flats. Myself and many owners are now seeking to take over the management of the communal areas … as this is now where we feel the building needs greater levels of work.”

He claimed that costs such as the ground rents paid by the landlords meant that owning a Mill View flat was not as profitable as it appeared.

Councillor Lynnie Hinnigan, a deputy mayor of Liverpool, said: “We were informed that none of the [Mill View] flats had a landlord licence. This was a foot in the door for us and we carried out inspections, which revealed tenants were living in cold conditions and spending a fortune trying to keep their flats warm due to inadequate and inefficient heating systems.

“We served improvement notices and as a direct result many have had work carried out – and we will continue to enforce the notices to make sure the remainder are done. This is exactly why we introduced landlord licensing”.