Helen Tucker, who is a partner of the housing management team at Anthony Collins solicitors and represents social landlords, has advised that most legal disrepair claims from tenants are genuine.
These comments were made after the significant rise of cases against landlords in recent years relating to housing disrepair claims. According to research carried by Inside Housing, councils have recently been paying millions of pounds every year in relation to disrepair claims.
The rise of claims has been caused by many factors including landlords failing to repair houses and aging housing stocks. There’s also been a rise of farmer-type claims (mainly from the Northwest of England) resulting in an increase of claims that have been deemed fraudulent, according to social landlord lawyers.
However, Ms Tucker clarified that whilst the majority of claims are not fraudulent, there are some cases where the appropriate procedure is not followed. For example, tenants making a claim rather than going through the landlord’s complaints process first.
Ms Tucker advised landlords to improve record-keeping with effective systems, well as improving repairs and planned maintenance. She also added ‘trying access injunctions when a tenant has been advised not to let landlords in after the legal process has started’. The death of Awaab Ishak, a two year old boy from Rochdale, was after Rochdale Boroughwide Housing failed to access the property after a disrepair claim was made by the family due to mould problems in their council property.
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