On Thursday the 22nd of February, the Housing Ombudsman released a Press Statement and published an article on their website, detailing their findings of 6 failings by Birmingham City Council which led to the Council as a landlord paying tenants compensation.
Last year the Council was referred to the Regulator for Social Housing for failing to maintain social housing in the city properly. This included 23,000 homes which did not meet the ‘decent-homes standard’ & over 15000 missed health and safety checks including fire safety checks, electrical, and asbestos. The Housing Ombudsman also published a Special Investigation Report into the Council, though yesterday's published investigations followed the initial report and relate to separate instances.
Cllr Ken Wood (Con, Sutton Walmley & Minworth), Shadow Cabinet Member for Housing & Homelessness, said
“The latest set of damning indictments by the Housing Ombudsman is yet another example of how badly the City’s housing repairs have been handled, as well as the desperate conditions some of our tenants are having to suffer. As Shadow Cabinet Member, I have repeatedly expressed my concern at the nature of “self-policing contracts” whereby, in the vast majority of cases, the contractor alone is relied upon to take the correct measures.
I have repeated these concerns in recent scrutiny meetings whenever the renewed repairs contract has been discussed. I ask the question “Would any householder just give the keys to their house and tell them to go in and do whatever they feel fit without some sort of report and schedule for the repairs being made?””
He continued,
“The Labour Administration continually try to use the age of the housing stock as an excuse but that really doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There are many houses the same age if not older in the City that were maintained to a high standard between 2004 and 2012, when the Conservative-led administration managed to ensure that 99% of its housing met the decent homes standard.
What is wrong with the City’s housing is purely down to a lack of investment and maintenance by the current administration, who have been described as the worst slum landlord in the city.”