Almost 100 tenants have taken legal action against Bradford Council since March in a bid to get their homes repaired.

Now the Council has set up a special cross-directorate team to deal with the crisis.

Housing chiefs say there has been no let-up in the torrent of legal notices being served by tenants.

But City Housing Officer Geraldine Howley said that although there had been "peaks and troughs", notices are running at a level similar to last year.

The Council received around 340 notices in the year ending last March.

It added that last February the cases had cost it about £1 million in officers' time, legal advice and surveys.

Mrs Howley was unable to give a cost for cases handled by the Council since April.

But, she said, the Council had claimed costs from a number of solicitors representing tenants.

And repairs had been carried out when the notices were served and no court case had been pursued to the end.

"We are within our budgets and have not overspent," she said.

The notices require the Council to carry out the repairs during a set period or go to court.

The Council claim the legislation lets people leapfrog the system when many have not even been through the normal channels of reporting repairs to the Council to get the work done.

Lynn Beswick, chairman of Bradford South East Tenants Federation, said: "I think it all depends on the severity of the situation and what repairs are needed.

"But I think people should really think about it very hard and go through the right channels where they can.

"This is taking more and more money out of the repairs budget."

Last year councils across the country faced 15,000 legal repairs notices. Manchester Council paid out more than £4 million compensation in cases where tenants said they had been kept waiting for long periods. Manchester Council says no less than 55 per cent of the compensation went to solicitors.

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