THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT HOUSING DISREPAIR:

The present state of Housing Condition claims made against local authorities

For the first time ever, data obtained by Pabla & Pabla Solicitors reveals the growing scale of Housing Condition claims made across England and Wales. The data was obtained by submitting Freedom of Information requests to every local council in the country. The data we have sourced reveals:

Claims have risen, on average, 392.02% over the last five years.
Councils and Housing Associations spend, on average, 427.72% more on Housing Disrepair-based legal costs than they were 5 years ago.
Some councils face spiraling legal costs, paying up to 9556.93% more than they were five years ago.
In the last five years, council maintenance costs for their properties have only increased 55.2%.
Across just 40 local councils and Housing Associations, £2,544,262,479.10 was spent in the last 5 years maintaining deteriorating housing stock.
Some councils believe that the growing number of Housing Disrepair claims being brought against them are largely restricting their ability to maintain their properties.
Some councils blame law firms for the rise in claim volume, even going so far as to say that tenants “do not understand” the legal process.

Download the full report

Download the full dataset

National Housing Disrepair data, for the first time ever

Most solicitors have a colloquial awareness that Housing Condition / Disrepair claims are on the rise – but accurate data demonstrating the true scale of this has not been available…until now. Our data compiles information on 25,643 Housing Condition claims brought against 81 local councils and Housing Associations in the last 5 years. Whilst we don’t have data from every council, our sample size clearly shows that Housing Condition claims are on the rise across England and Wales.

Our FOIA requests posed four KEY questions to every council and Housing Association we contacted:

Year by year, how many Housing Disrepair claims have you received?
Year by year, how much did the council pay in legal costs related to these claims?
Year by year, how much did the council pay on maintenance costs on their social housing stock?
Any further comments?

The answers we received back varied widely in terms of scope, quality of data provided, and overall willingness to respond. We compiled all of the data we received into a single spreadsheet which we have published here for all to see. Our commentary on the data, expertly penned by our very own Housing Operations Coordinator, Jacob Poole, aims to make an honest appraisal of the wider context for the data. He explores the current state of the claims landscape in the legal sector and, of course, the UK’s ongoing housing crisis.

It is our sincere hope that by publishing this information, and offering an explanation of the background context that underpins it, that all stakeholders can finally have a frank conversation about it’s most important implication: all tenants should be provided with a safe, habitable home.

Download the full report

Download the full dataset

Quotes from the team behind the report:

Writer and researcher, Jacob Poole, said: “I am excited to share my findings with other professional bodies in the housing market. We can finally acknowledge with statistics that legal claims brought against social housing providers is on the rise. Using this information, it is my hope that we can aim to be more transparent moving forward in discussions about redress.”

Supervisor of the project and writer of the foreword, Christian Potter, said: “The UK’s social housing provision is very disparate, meaning that obtaining collective data about claims, repairs, and damages, is logistically very difficult. This has led concerned parties to surmise, estimate, or altogether guess as to the true scope of the changing social housing landscape. Now, with data collated for the first time, we hope that all parties can engage in discussions from a common starting point. I am pleased that we can bring this data to a wider audience and hope that the conversations that follow, will benefit the most important party of all – the tenant.“