A council in south London has revealed it spent a complete of £16.3m on authorized charges and compensation from its Housing Income Account (HRA) prior to now three years.
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The most recent figures for spending from Lambeth Council’s HRA, between 2020-21 and 2022-23, had been revealed underneath Freedom Of Data (FOI) laws.
The end result of the FOI request was shared on social media by resident group Save Central Hill final week.
In February 2022, Lambeth topped an inventory of councils that had spent cash from its HRA on authorized disrepair claims introduced by tenants between 2017-18 and 2020-21 following the same FOI request made as part of a larger investigation by Inside Housing.
On the time of this request, Lambeth had paid £12.1m for the 4 years since 2017-18. The council takes £138m in lease per 12 months from its houses, which types nearly all of earnings into the HRA.
The FOI request despatched by Inside Housing to stock-owning councils throughout England confirmed that within the 4 years as much as the top of March 2021, the 70 native authorities that offered figures confronted 11,996 claims, with 55 paying out a complete of £45.4m to cope with claims.
Commenting on the newest figures for authorized prices spent from its HRA, Lambeth Council mentioned that with greater than 33,000 council houses, its precedence is to make sure “all of those are protected and well-maintained for our tenants”.
A spokesperson mentioned: “Regardless of vital cuts in authorities funding over greater than a decade, we have now invested lots of of tens of millions of kilos in bettering our council houses and estates, according to the Lambeth Housing Commonplace.
“We now have additionally focused on bettering the day-to-day repairs and upkeep offered to residents, together with bringing in extra assist and a model new in-house repairs group. These groups at the moment perform over 2,000 repairs to council houses each week.
“The council is dedicated to performing rapidly to resolve issues when they’re delivered to our consideration. However we’re additionally taking motion to deal with the longer-term pressures on our repairs operation – for instance, by means of a survey of our whole housing inventory to proactively determine enhancements that may be made to our houses to scale back future repairs.”
The council mentioned that in response to what it described as a “nationwide pattern of rising disrepair claims”, it has sponsored a brand new, unbiased Disrepair Arbitration Scheme.
The spokesperson added: “Councils throughout the UK have confronted an inflow of claims, triggering mounting prices for compensation and authorized charges, pushed largely by a surge in opportunistic authorized corporations working on this space.
“Lambeth’s scheme goals to make sure disrepair claims are resolved quicker and extra pretty for our residents. The place authorized prices come up from restore claims, these are paid by means of the related earnings inside the HRA ring-fence, as these prices are associated to HRA properties and tenants.”
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Author: ” — www.insidehousing.co.uk ”