Birmingham City Council is ‘worst landlord’ in the city, says councillor

Birmingham city council is “probably the worst landlord” in the city after a special report detailed multiple housing failures at the local authority, a councillor has said.

Conservative councillor Meirion Jenkins made the remark during the council’s audit committee, after a special housing ombudsman report presented suggests tenants “are met with increasing challenge to get the landlord to put things right”.

Birmingham city council has received five public interest reports from the local government and social care ombudsman (LGSCO) – varying from failing bin collections to home and school transport.

Last month, the same audit committee reported the council had to shell out £29,700 to a resident who lived in “unsuitable temporary accommodation” – payable in sums of £300 for each month the resident spent in the property.

Critically, the special report by the ombudsman told the council – which owns 60,000-plus-homes – to make robust changes to its “fundamentally flawed” complaint-handling process.

Councillor Jenkins said: “I’m not aware of anywhere else that’s even had two or three complaints.

“Let’s remember that these public interest reports generally don’t arise as a result of an incident. They will be the result of multiple incidents and multiple failures. Even then you can’t go to the ombudsman until you’ve exhausted the internal complaints procedure. When you think of like, all the effort and time that we put into punishing private landlords from central and local government, it turns that we are probably the worst landlord in in Birmingham.

“That’s not just political position, and you know, that’s the fact with over 15,000 complaints made to the LGSCO, we were 32 from the bottom. This is the third consecutive year that the Ombudsman has raised concerns about the time taken to implement remedies.”

The housing ombudsman makes the final decision on disputes between residents and council landlords.

6 month investigation into housing department

The body undertook a six month monitoring investigation into Birmingham city council’s housing department after the ombudsman found the council culpable of severe maladministration over delays in repairing a water leak.

The ombudsman made 25 findings across these cases and found maladministration in 24 of them, including five findings of severe maladministration, representing a maladministration rate of 96%. Within the report, the ombudsman said Birmingham city council’s complaints and compensation policy often led to frequents delay for tenants.

It said the compensation policy itself meant residents could never achieve an appropriate remedy when the council got something wrong and “exacerbated the landlord’s adversarial approach to repairs, complaint handling and paying compensation when something has gone wrong”.

The ombudsman said there was limited evidence of learning from complaints and suitable governance in the cases it monitored, with the same issues repeated.

Previously, Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman, told the interim chief executive, Deborah Cadman the maladministration rate are “higher than the average for the sector”.

In a letter to Ms Cadman, Michael King, the chair of the LGSCO, said he had written to the council for the “third consecutive year” about “raised concerns about delays in the remedy process and yet these delays persist”.

“I once again invite the council to consider how it might make improvements to act on our recommendations within the agreed timescales,” he said.

In response to both councillor Jenkins and the wider report, Deborah Cadman, the chief executive of Birmingham city council, said: “You’re absolutely right, but what I say to all staff that I talk to is that our residents should expect no less a service than if we operated as a shop and someone brought something.

“I’m absolutely clear about that. We still have a duty and obligation – moral or otherwise – to deliver the best we can to the residents of this city, and I’m absolutely clear about that.”

During the meeting, Ms Cadman said the complaint system must be “refined, like a work of art”. We wouldn’t have as many complaints as we have if the services were better..we are absolutely focused on improving basic service.”

Housing owned and rented out by Birmingham city council has faced criticism this week after the council confirmed it would be increasing social rents by 7%.

Meanwhile the leader of Birmingham city council, Ian Ward, claimed only 22% of housing built in the city is affordable – well below the target of 35% per development.