Today, it has been revealed that more than 40,000 Birmingham City Council homes have kitchens and bathrooms that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard. The revelation was included in a Cabinet report outlining how the Council plans to address the fact that over 70% of its housing stock currently falls below this national standard.
Over the next four years, the Council will need to replace 22,129 kitchens and 18,424 bathrooms—a total of 40,573 major upgrades.
When Labour took control of Birmingham City Council in 2012, 99% of Council homes met the Decent Homes Standard, supported by a fully costed maintenance programme to maintain that level. Sadly, after more than a decade of failure to invest properly in its housing stock, tenants have been left living in unacceptable conditions. The Labour administration has now been forced to take action following intervention by the Housing Ombudsman.
Due to the urgent scale of the work required, the Council has agreed to pay contractors 30% of the cost of each replacement by the third day of work. Local Conservative councillors have warned that this arrangement demands rigorous monitoring and quality checks to ensure tenants' rents are spent wisely and that the work delivered meets the high standards tenants rightly expect
Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington), Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives, said:
Tenants of Birmingham have been let down by the City Council for a decade of failure to maintain Council houses. It is welcome that tenants will finally get their failing bathrooms and kitchens replaced. It should never have been allowed to get to the situation that over 40,000 kitchens and bathrooms needed replacing at one time.
This level of failure by Birmingham City Council proves yet again why the City of Birmingham needs a change of control at the Council. It should also not be forgotten that those tenants waiting for replacement bathrooms and kitchens have already had to live for years waiting for them and some will be waiting another 4 years under the Council's plan.
Cllr Bruce Lines (Con, Bartley Green), Shadow Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness, commented:
Labour’s catastrophic mismanagement has left Birmingham tenants betrayed — where 99% of homes once met the Decent Homes Standard, that figure has now plummeted to less than 30%. After over a decade of neglect and underinvestment, it will take years to undo the damage. Labour have turned the Council into the city’s largest slum landlord. They cannot be trusted with housing - or anything else. The City is not safe in Labour's hands.
