Council approves extra £6.9m to help tackle disrepair claims

In 2022, an Inside Housing investigation revealed that councils in England were spending millions on disrepair claims, which had seen an exponential rise over five years. 

It also found that the issue was most acute in the capital and other large cities. 

Several factors were behind the hike in claims, including the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, a rise in ‘no win no fee’ firms coming into the market, a lack of local authority resources, and a failure to address disrepair in properties by social landlords. 

According to Haringey’s report: “The council needs to ensure it has sufficient resources in place to repair the 1000+ housing disrepair claims where legal action has commenced. 

“At the present time, there is not sufficient capacity within the responsive repairs service to provide the required repairs, we therefore need to procure contractors to ensure that we can complete the repairs in a timely manner.”

The report said the council is building capacity to deal with the demand in-house, but in the meantime still needs to instruct external solicitors. 

Sarah Williams, deputy leader and cabinet member for housing and planning at Haringey Council, told Inside Housing that the local authority is “working hard to deliver a high-quality housing service through our major investment and improvement programme, and we are already making significant progress”. 

She said: “Local authorities across the country are struggling with high levels of disrepair because of the historic underfunding of major works in social housing over the past decades. 

“This has led to legal firms actively targeting our estates and seeking to profit from our residents. This simply delays the resolution of repairs at the same time as increasing pressure on already tight housing finances. 

“As a result of this, we are exploring a range of options to deter these firms from exploiting our tenants, investing heavily to tackle disrepair cases and increasing our in-house legal capacity to deal with any outstanding claims.”

It recently emerged that the number of legal disrepair claims brought against Greenwich Council increased by more than 350% between 2018-19 and 2023-24.