The Regulator of Social Housing Finds Serious Problems at Birmingham City Council.

The Regulator of Social Housing has recently published a regulatory notice which finds that Birmingham City Council has breached its consumer standards for social housing both in relation to health and safety and in complaints handling. In this article, we will look more closely at what this notice reveals.

Firstly, what is the role of the Regulator of Social Housing?

The Regulator of Social Housing (or RSH) is an executive, non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The RSH exists to promote good standards in social housing provision. It undertakes economic regulation of the providers of social housing who are registered with it, and it examines governance, financial viability and value for money. It sets consumer standards in the sector and is able to take action if these standards are breached.

Housing in Birmingham – some background

The Birmingham City Council area has the highest population of any council area in the UK at circa 1.14m. The council itself says it is the largest local authority in Europe.

Birmingham has a housing stock of around 468,000 properties of all tenures. Within this, Birmingham City Council manages around 54,000 social housing properties of its own, 5,000 of which are supported housing.

Birmingham also has a large private rented sector. According to the city’s own figures there were around 105,000 PRS properties here in 2021.

As regards the PRS, Birmingham City Council is considerably tightening up its licensing regime this year. As from June 2023 a selective licensing scheme applies in 25 wards of the city with a five year licence costing £700. The council themselves say the scheme will be the largest in the UK and cover between 40,000-50,000 properties. At the same time, the city council introduces a city-wide additional licensing scheme for smaller HMOs, with a licence costing £755.

Why Birmingham City Council was investigated

 In January 2023 the Housing Ombudsman issued a special report on practices within Birmingham’s social housing provision. The report was initiated following an earlier complaint by a tenant. The report found that Birmingham City Council’s complaints handling procedure was ‘fundamentally flawed’.

Subsequent to the Housing Ombudsman’s report the RSH investigated the council’s compliance with its consumer standards. As a registered provider, Birmingham City Council is required to comply with these consumer standards, including the Home Standard and the Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard.

What the Regulator of Social Housing says about Birmingham

In its regulatory notice published on 24 May 2023 the Regulator of Social Housing concludes that Birmingham City Council has breached its consumer standards.

The notice says that Birmingham City Council has breached the Home Standard and the Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard. It says that as a consequence of this breach, there has been the potential for serious detriment to the council’s tenants.

Specifically the RSH’s investigation says that around 23,000 social homes owned by Birmingham City Council do not meet the Decent Homes Standard – a standard for social housing that has been in existence for around 20 years now.

The RSH also found a number of what it called serious health and safety issues across significant numbers of homes. These included around 17,000 overdue asbestos surveys, around 15,500 late electrical safety inspections and more than 1,000 overdue fire risk assessments (these were mainly for low rise housing blocks).

The RSH commented: ‘These failures meant thousands of council tenants were at potential risk of serious harm.’

The RSH also said it has identified significant failures in the way the council handles its tenants’ complaints. There were more than 1,000 overdue responses (around 60% of open cases) to complaints at the time of the investigation. The regulator said its investigation followed earlier external reviews which found that the council’s engagement with tenants was ineffective, and that it did not understand or value tenants’ needs.

What is happening as a result of the regulatory notice?

The RSH has said that it expects Birmingham City Council to take urgent action to address these failings and return to compliance with its standards. It says that in response to the problems identified, Birmingham City Council is seeking to understand the extent of the issues and through its plans, is taking steps to address them.

However, the RSH has reiterated that taking into account the number of tenants potentially affected, the seriousness of the issues and the duration for which tenants are exposed to risk that there is a risk of serious detriment to tenants during this period.

The RSH says that Birmingham City Council has started to put in place a programme to rectify the failures. It adds that they will work with the council as they continue to address these issues, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers its health and safety and decency programmes and improvements in how it engages with tenants.

Although the RSH does have a range of statutory powers allowing it to take more direct action it has a general policy of working with providers where possible.

In a public statement Birmingham City Council has acknowledged that the ways in which these areas have been managed do not meet the standards expected by their tenants. It says that it is determined to address the issues raised by the RSH quickly. The council has developed an action plan to monitor and track improvements.

As regards the handling of tenant complaints, the council adds that many of the actions recommended in the Housing Ombudsman’s original report have been completed, and the remainder will be completed within six months.

Some final thoughts

It would not be unfair to say that the Regulator of Social Housing’s regulatory notice does not, perhaps, emphasise the seriousness of the situation regarding Birmingham’s social housing stock as much as it could do. Twenty three thousands potentially seriously hazardous properties not only affects a sizable number of residents but is also just over 40% of the council’s social housing stock. The notice also suggests that the council does not have effective systems in place to allow it to meet its responsibilities in both housing quality and health and safety. It suggests the issues regarding complaints handling have been ongoing for some time and that the council has been aware of them.

Many people will see the irony in this situation, especially with regard to Birmingham’s new and substantial selective licensing scheme. Local authorities generally say that they introduce selective licensing schemes to help them control and improve the standard of accommodation in the PRS. Birmingham City Council specifically quoted a desire to ‘drive up standards’ when applying for consent to introduce the scheme. Yet, this council does not seem to be able to provide the same standard of housing to its own tenants as it is expecting private landlords in the city to provide to theirs.

The statistics on Birmingham’s PRS enforcement activity also provide some food for thought. Figures from Open Democracy show that in the three years to 2022 Birmingham City Council prosecuted just two landlords and issued 67 civil penalty notices with just £100,976 raised in fines. So either the 100,000+ privately rented properties in Birmingham have a high rate of compliance with the rules and regulations – perhaps considerably better than the social sector – or maybe they are not that extensively enforced.

Either way, the City of Birmingham does not look a particularly good nor safe place to be a social housing tenant at the moment.