The ability of Camden Council to maintain and care for its housing stock is in question, with continued reports of ongoing building defects and unacceptable impacts on people’s lives. Defects take many forms, including leaks, damp and mould; lack of insulation and ventilation; build-up of dirt, rubbish and pest infestation; accessibility issues when lifts break down and lack of heating and hot water. The Council is severely stretched by its statutory obligations to provide safe and decent quality homes, and many calls for help are not being addressed. Compounded with the overcrowding that exists in many council homes, repair delays result in physical and mental health impacts for residents and affect young and vulnerable people particularly badly.
.
People report that they have to make multiple repair requests and seek out the assistance of their local councillor (housing repairs casework takes up a disproportionate amount of councillors’ time, which should not be necessary). There are many cases where repairs issues are not resolved over periods of months and years. People are not able to hold the Housing Repairs Service to account, as evidenced by many unresolved Stage 2 complaints.
.
Repairs fall into different categories:
- Reactive repairs: day-to-day repairs carried out as they arise
- Responsive repairs: repair works that need some advance planning
- Capital Works: major maintenance programmes to renew building elements that have reached the end of their life, such as roof coverings, windows, heating, water supplies and electrics as well as internal finishes and fittings (kitchens and bathrooms). These works need careful planning.
.
Preventative maintenance, such as cleaning out gutters, used to be carried out on a routine basis, but was scrapped some time ago as a cost saving measure. This has contributed to a build-up of repairs problems, as no action is taken until after a problem has materialised. The more day-to-day repairs are neglected, the greater the cost of Camden’s Capital Works programmes becomes, and the less is achieved within limited budgets. It is a cycle of decline.
.
Part of the reason for poor housing maintenance is a lack of funding resulting from spending cuts imposed by central government from 2010 onwards. In addition, local authorites have to pay debt interest on loans that came about when government ended the national Housing Revenue Account (HRA) subsidy system in 2012 and introduced the “self-financing” model. The aim was to allow social landlords to retain all their rental income in exchange for taking full responsibility for their housing stock. The new regime involved councils paying an “exit payment” to the Treasury, based on assumptions about the rental income and expenditure required to maintain each council’s housing stock over 30 years. These assumptions have been undermined by changes in how HRA accounts are funded, and the model has failed.
.
Camden Council now pays around £20m in debt interest every year on a £426m loan. This is almost the amount the Council spends on reactive repairs. The resulting drain on its HRA is one reason why Camden Council has gone down the route of selling off housing that is costly to maintain (often as a result of neglect), which reduces the amount of much needed council homes available.
.
These debts urgently need to be cancelled to enable local authorities to carry out much needed repairs: https://thelabourcampaignforcouncilhousing.org/2026/08/03/cancelling-council-housing-debt/.
The housing charity SHELTER is calling for this but there has been little progress. A national campaign is needed to call for action.
.
Apart from the lack of funding, there is evidence of systemic problems with Camden’s Housing Repairs Service. It appears to be over-centralised, corporatised and over-reliant on digital platforms to manage the ‘customer interface’. Camden relies on outsourced assets management companies who provide a remote, high-level and expensive service. In addition, the Repairs Service has become more fragmented following the introduction of legislation to address building safety and the introduction of multiple software management systems. As result the Repairs Service does not carry out repairs in a holistic way that deals with underlying building defects- its approach is to patch up failing services and building fabric, without putting in place long-term solutions to remedy the causes of the defect. For example, the Repairs Service will make multiple return visits to patch repair leaking pipework, over years, at huge cost to residents who have to suffer the effect of leaks on their homes, rather than making the investment to replace pipework, which would be cheaper in the long run.
.
When the Council fails to deal with long term problems, such as leaks and water ingress, residents often have little choice but to get legal help to hold the Council responsible for disrepair. This results in high costs for the Council, with more money from the HRA being wasted.
.
Camden Council relies on consultant surveyors to tell them what needs doing, instead of building up in-house knowledge of the buildings it is responsible for. An alternative approach to housing repairs would be increase the number of in-house surveyors and engineers, and to locate repair teams in neighbourhood hubs, so that communities can be directly supported by people who know and care about what they are doing and can build relationships with residents based on competence and trust.
.
To fix these problems we need:
- increased central government funding
- cancellation of the 2012 debt
- overhaul of Camden’s Repair and Maintenance services (see https://housingrebellioncamden.org/towards-a-housing-manifesto/) to make it more effective and accountable
.
A related issue is the high repair costs being charged to leaseholders who live in buildings where Camden Council is the freeholder, around 10,000 flats. Many believe that the share leaseholders are being charged is disproportionate, and the Council is unfairly transferring costs to leaseholders. Inflated costs can be due to the Council’s procurement processes, which tends to select contractors with a high risk of failing to perform or going out of business, which has costly consequences for both landlord and leaseholder .t of business, which has costly consequences for both landlord and leaseholder.
.
Where repairs are neglected for years on end, it is obvious Camden Council wants demolition and rebuilding, which is happening at West Kentish Town Estate, Bacton and Wendling Estates in Gospel Oak and Regents Park Estate. This has an unacceptable impact on people and planet.
