Mould: Gap in the demand for legal representation
The number of housing disrepair claims made against local councils has increased almost five-fold this decade but the picture for legal costs is more mixed, groundbreaking research has found.
It said some councils blame solicitors for encouraging tenants to claim and for racking up costs.
The white paper [1] by Manchester law firm Pabla & Pabla – based on Freedom of Information Act requests made to all 317 councils in England – sought to prove whether the anecdotal evidence that housing disrepair claims were on the rise was actually true.
It received responses from 78 councils – many others having transferred their housing stock to housing associations – and just three of 100 housing associations, which are not currently required to respond to information requests.
The Housing Ombudsman recorded 4,368 complaints about property condition in 2024, while there were 1,615 disrepair claims brought through legal aid in 2023/24.
“This has left a gap in the demand for legal representation. Housing disrepair claims have become an area of interest and profitability for private solicitors,” wrote white paper author Jacob Poole, Pabla’s housing operations co-ordinator.
The data showed that the volume of housing disrepair claims has risen across all respondents by 392% between 2020 and 2024 – from 1,829 claims a year between them to 8,999.
For some councils, there were extreme rises in percentage terms because the number of claims received in 2020 were small; Charwood Borough Council in Leicestershire went from one claim in 2020 to 113 in 2024, an 11,200% increase.
But even councils with a higher baseline saw big increases: Sheffield City Council increased nearly six times, from 139 claims to 821, while the London Borough of Lambeth more than doubled from 318 to 764.
However, the authority with the highest number of claims in 2020 – Wolverhampton City Council – was one of only two to report a reduction by 2024, from 305 to 207. Waverley Borough Council was the other, from 11 claims to nine.
Councils and housing associations spent, on average, 428% more in costs over the period to around £25m, although their data did not distinguish between compensation, adverse costs and their own costs and was not uniformly recorded.
Again, there were extreme rises – Harlow Council has gone from spending £3,100 on seven claims to £298,500 on 66 – and although most were spending more, seven were spending less. Despite dealing with nearly four times as many claims, Blackpool Council has reduced its spend by 20%.
“From the data, this paper asserts that a dramatic increase in claim volume does not necessarily correlate directly with a dramatic increase in legal costs,” said Mr Poole.
“Some councils saw a decrease in legal costs despite an increase in claim volume. This presents the question: how prepared are councils to deal with a rise in claim volume?”
The research also showed the 40 respondents that answered the question spent £2.5bn between them over the five years maintaining deteriorating housing stock, although again there were limitations to the data provided.
The requests also gave councils the opportunity to comment on the figures they had provided. While many did not, some complained that legal claims negatively affected their ability to spend more on maintenance and that claimant solicitors were just in it for the money.
Portsmouth City Council stated: “Disrepair claims remain a rich source of work for claims firms, which exploit any potential gaps in housing and asset management for financial gain with a high majority of customers receiving minimal compensation.”
Welwyn & Hatfield Borough Council added that “solicitors make more money than the tenants”, and Brighton & Hove City Council accused them of “building costs through unnecessary correspondence rather than remedying identified disrepair”.
Several councils called for the introduction of fixed recoverable costs, from which housing disrepair work is currently excluded.
The white paper pointed out that “if the landlord actually addressed maintenance issues in their properties within reasonable timeframes, they would simply not have to spend resources on housing disrepair claims”.
There were accusations too of solicitors cold-calling residents in social housing but Pabla & Pabla pointed to their professional obligations – and those of claims management companies under the Financial Conduct Authority – and said any wrongdoers “should be held to account for bad practice”.
Councils were also unsurprisingly keen on tenants using internal complaints procedures (ICPs) instead of litigation.
The difference, the law firm noted, was that “a settled legal claim will give a legally binding contract with clear expert evidence guiding what repairs need completing”, while ICPs recommended that tenants sought redress through the Housing Ombudsman.
However, the ombudsman does not gather its own expert evidence, “so impartial surveyor reports conducted in a legal claim can be the most effective way to identify disrepair”.
While ICPs were “an important aspect of redress, and tenants should not be discouraged from pursuing them”, if a tenant has made a landlord aware of a disrepair issue and it has not been remedied, “it is clearly important that legal support is available to them”.
See Jacob Poole’s blog here [2]. Our next Housing Condition Conference [3] is on 16 April in Manchester.