A property mogul who once notoriously banned "battered wives" from renting his properties is now launching a personal campaign to help protect female victims of domestic abuse.

Millionaire landlord Fergus Wilson, who came under fire for his policy when it was revealed in 2017, has called for a change in the law to try and prevent those affected having to leave their matrimonial home.

After selling up his property portfolio of homes in Ashford and Maidstone, he says he wants to "devote my energies" towards helping victims, and hopes to set up a website to raise awareness of such abuse.

The 70-year-old, who tried to run for Kent’s police and crime commissioner in 2016 but was deemed unable to due to a paperwork issue, suggests officers should enforce a "no fault exclusion" on men every time they are called to domestic disputes.

"The way it works now is that you take the woman away from danger by removing her from the home, and the kiddies have to change school, but I think the way to do it is to remove the alleged perpetrator," he said.

"If you don't do that, you are rewarding the wrongdoing and the potential victims are the ones who are disrupted."

Mr Wilson said he accepted domestic abuse victims were not always women being attacked by men, but said he wanted to meet with the women's and equalities minister to discuss how female victims in particular could be better protected.

"Heavyweights should stick to heavyweights and flyweights should stick to flyweights," he added.

"They should pick on someone their own size, let's have it all on a level playing field.

"In fact, it offends me that any man is beating up a woman like that."

Asked if his outlook had changed since he was widely criticised for imposing bans on certain groups of potential tenants, including "battered wives", he said: "Not particularly, I don't even think there was any real 'backlash'.

"I was recently on a Panorama documentary which has been viewed by more than 100,000 people on YouTube and the reaction towards me has been very positive.

"Usually whenever I'm in the papers I get a couple of enquiries about a house, but since then I've had about 30."

Our reporter Sean Axtell sat down with the property mogul for a chat about his life.

And in 2017 he offered to fight another KM reporter for £10,000.