I love reading all the posts on how it's the landlords fault. I'm a landlord and houses I've lived in have suffered from this problem and properties I rent out suffer from this problem.
Over the years I've thrown thousands of pounds at doing things like injection damp proofing, hacking off the plaster 1 metre up from the ground floor replacing with water proof cement render then re-plastering. None of these solutions have lasted more than a couple of years. It's a complete waste of money.
The only solution I've found that works needs to be done during a complete re-furb. Remove all skirting, architrave, hack off all plaster work then timber stud all solid internal and external walls. On the back of the studding you need a damp proof membrane and inside the studding you need to fit insulation board for example Kingspan.
This method means it doesn't matter how damp or cold your walls get there is no way it can transfer the problem to the internal surfaces. Problem solved.
If you want to point the blame, I'd say point your finger at succesive goverments failure to get a cheap housing system in place to replace the decrepit early 1900's crap we're living in.
Timber framed houses using tried and tested tech developed in the Scandinavian countries is my bet for cheap affordable future solutions. These houses should be mass produced in factories and supplied as simple to erect kits.
Sorry for the rant
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