The Audit Commission has clashed with Tory-controlled Birmingham City Council over a critical verdict on the quality of its housing services for council tenants.
The commission has awarded the city a ‘fair’, one-star rating with ‘promising prospects for improvement’, but did not publish the findings of its report until 4 August – almost 16 months since the initial inspectors assessed the service last year, but met with objections from the council.
A spokesperson said: ‘It is unusual for a report to be published 16 months after inspection, but this one was subject to a lengthy and thorough review requested by Birmingham City Council. The council has said it had acted on the report’s recommendations. We thought it would benefit tenants to read this report for comparison and context.’
Birmingham City Council owns more than 65,000 rented homes throughout the city, as well as 6,000 leasehold properties, making it one of Europe’s largest social landlords. An earlier 2009 report on the city’s strategic housing function had awarded it a ‘good’, two-star judgment, with ‘excellent’ prospects for improvement.
The newly-published report says tenants were met with a very variable quality of service, and the council needed to ensure greater consistency in how its services were delivered, although inspectors do praise the council for its effective tackling of anti-social behaviour and hate crime on housing estates.
One-quarter of complaints about housing were not dealt with in a two-week target, while 10% of telephone calls were ‘lost’ at the council’s contact centre. The commission also accused the council of exaggerating the performance of its council house repairs teams.
Inspectors claimed ‘The service is not customer-focused in some key areas, such as appointment arrangements. Customer satisfaction is low, particularly with the quality of work, although customers do rate some areas highly, for example, the attitude of workers.’
Elaine Elkington, strategic director for homes and neighbourhoods, said: ‘The council asked for a review of the Audit Commission’s intended published results last year, as it did not – and still does not – reflect the experience our customers, contractor partners and what stakeholders tell us about our service.
‘While disappointing, the results are in line with 70% of other published scores for councils which have retained their housing stock. Since 2002/03, only two relatively-small local authority landlords have achieved a higher rating than one star for the inspection of their entire landlord service.’
