It’s time Sajid Javid took action and created a compulsory housing ombudsman

Currently landlords, letting agents and big housebuilding companies hold all of the cards. Well, it's about time the power was put back into the hands of tenants

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid does possess the capacity for a good idea, now and again (Getty)

Injustice festers in the housing market like a boil about to burst. Three stories have brought that home to me in the last week.

The first was a BBC London report on the sky-high service charges currently being heaped upon leasehold tenants in the capital.

The second was a friend telling me he was left banging his head against a damp wall, because his letting agent tried to blame him for a condensation problem his home had developed – rather than getting the landlord in to fix it.

The third? It was the £600m – yes you read that right – showered upon a bunch of undeserving Persimmon Homes executives, whose company has got fat off the taxpayer-funded Help to Buy scheme.

Whatever Theresa May would have you believe, this is not a nation that works for the many. Not even close. However, there are means available through which the balance could be redressed in this particular area.

I suggested one way of fixing the last problem in my City comment column – you put workers in the boardroom, and ensure they get membership of pay-setting remuneration committees when they get there.

There is also a simple way to fix the other two, plus a plethora of other issues that people living in the leasehold and private-rented sectors have to grapple with, not to mention those who buy the new build properties currently being thrown up by companies like Persimmon.

You extend the housing ombudsman to cover them, and beef up its powers so that it can address a much wider range of issues.

Currently landlords, letting agents and big housebuilding companies hold most of the cards. While some of their decisions can be challenged, it’s usually only after the fact, and it often involves going through the court system. That, of course, is time consuming, not to mention so ruinously expensive that it’s effectively out of the reach of most people.

There are a variety of bodies offering a cheaper way of obtaining redress that cover various bits of the housing market. The housing ombudsman itself is only compulsory for social landlords; councils, housing associations and their ilk. Private landlords can voluntarily sign up to the scheme.

You can see the problem there, however: those that do probably aren’t the sort of landlords whose tenants would need to call on it.

What are the chances of changing that? Better than you might expect.

A couple of weeks ago, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, a minister to whom good ideas aren’t an entirely foreign concept (which will probably limit his prospects of advancement), announced a consultation on the creation of a single housing ombudsman.

Unfortunately, it won’t get under way until next year, but there is the chance that it will result in something like what I’ve suggested.

The stumbling block will be that the complaints from the businesses and bodies liable to come under its remit will be so loud that they could drown out Metallica playing “Master of Puppets” with the amps turned up to 11.

When faced with that sort of thing, Theresa May's Government has made a depressing habit of buckling, with the execution of matters relating to Brexit where the extremists, quiescent for now, have been making hay.

Want an example? Look at how it responded to the moaning and wailing when it suggested it might press ahead with my solution to Persimmon’s absurd bonuses.

The idea was dropped like a hot potato when the City kicked up a stink. What ultimately emerged was a tepid alternative that basically allows companies to carry on as they are, just so long as they designate a tame non-executive director to pretend to care about employees.

This was a key part of what the Government had the gall to claim was a world-leading package of corporate reforms.

Nearly every time that powerful vested interests are threatened, the Tory Party reverts to type and bows down before them.

To achieve meaningful change when it comes to housing, Javid will have to prove he's made of sterner stuff. He will have to face down landlords, letting agents and others who have grown fat by skewering tenants up and down the country.

They will want no part of an ombudsman with the power to force them to shape up, and pay up, and that they will have to fund (the current Housing Ombudsman charges its members an annual fee for each unit).

But perhaps Javid can prove that there is indeed a small corner of decency within the nasty party. Stranger things have happened of late.