Sheffield Council spending millions of pounds on rocketing housing disrepair claims

It is no secret the council has struggled to keep up with council housing repairs in recent years as it battles a Covid backlog built up when non-urgent work was paused and the effects of changes to legislation.

Its latest report on the issue prepared for an upcoming housing committee meeting revealed the problem was still getting worse.

At the start of 2018, the number of new disrepair cases was 117. By April this year the number had rocketed to 1,970.

Tenants can take legal action against their landlord, including local authorities, for failing to fix disrepair or damage to their rented property.

Council officers said if the authority could complete 95 per cent of repair work within 55 days it would save an estimated £3.5 million per year in disrepair claims.

However, it is currently only completing 6.5 per cent of disrepair jobs within the 55 day target.

Legal costs have spiralled as claims farmers have targeted social landlords because they can claim disproportionately high costs in relation to damages, the council said.

At it battles the backlog, new cases keep coming in and the council has not been able to keep up.

It expects the number of caseloads to reach a peak in the next financial year and not return to pre-Covid levels.

Before Covid, there were on average between 117 and 200 cases per year. Officers predict this to be around 500 and 840 cases per year going forward.

Council officers said the situation was similar across the country.

They said: “Over the last 12 – 18 months we have worked hard to complete as many disrepair works orders as possible. Our aim is to complete work within our repairing obligations.

“Due to the large volume of cases this is difficult with our current resourcing levels within the repairs service. Works orders vary in nature and content of work, some are complex and contain a large amount of repair works which affect several rooms within a property. Work can take anything from one to two weeks to complete and sometimes longer if follow-up work needs to be completed in a sequential order such as painting after plastering works.”

The council said it was planning to increase the number of teams to tackle the caseload.

Officers said: “It is clear that we need to invest in further repair teams to ensure that we can complete a higher number of works orders per month and part of our early resolution plan is to review the number of teams working on disrepair to deliver a overall reduction in cases and a reduction in the level of compensation paid.”

Councillors on the housing committee will discuss the issue in a meeting on Thursday, September 14.