FOI request – Private Rented Sector Complaints and Service Requests
Case reference FOI2026/01086
Received 23 September 2026
Published 16 October 2026
Request
I am writing to request information relating to complaints and service requests concerning privately rented residential properties. Please could you provide the following information for each calendar year from 2021 to 2025 inclusive: 1) The total number of complaints or service requests received by the council relating to privately rented residential properties. 2) A breakdown of these complaints or service requests by the council's existing recorded category or issue type, for example, where applicable, anti-social behaviour, noise nuisance, waste/rubbish, animal-related nuisance, property damage or other environmental/neighbourhood issues. If the council does not routinely identify whether a property is privately rented within its general complaints system, please provide the requested information where it is held within a relevant private-sector housing, environmental health, housing standards or housing enforcement dataset. If the council does not categorise complaints or service requests using the examples above, please provide the existing categories used by the council rather than creating a new categorisation specifically for this request. If the requested information is not held in exactly the format described, please provide the closest equivalent information already held by the council, where this can be provided without undertaking new analysis or creating a new dataset. We are requesting aggregated figures only and do not require any personally identifiable information, individual case details, addresses or information about specific landlords or tenants. We are also not asking the council to manually review individual cases in order to categorise them. Where the requested information is already held in a recorded, reportable or readily extractable format, please provide it in that form. If any part of this request is considered to exceed the appropriate cost limit, please provide the information that can be supplied within the limit and advise which element(s) would need to be narrowed. If the council does not hold the requested information, please confirm this and, where possible, indicate whether a similar dataset is held by another department or under a different category.
Response
Response to Questions 1 and 2
The Council's software system does not routinely identify whether a property is privately rented within its general complaints records.
However, the Council holds the following information within its relevant housing complaints dataset, which is provided using the existing recorded categories.
|
Year |
Total |
Poor Conditions |
Unlicensed |
Tenancy Relations |
Miscellaneous |
|
2021 |
1,308 |
316 |
143 |
300 |
549 |
|
2022 |
1,880 |
398 |
173 |
430 |
879 |
|
2023 |
2,039 |
497 |
303 |
410 |
829 |
|
2024 |
1,735 |
453 |
294 |
409 |
579 |
|
2025 |
1,610 |
431 |
369 |
323 |
487 |
The figures above represent the information held within the Council's existing dataset and are presented using the categories in which complaints and service requests are recorded.
Documents
This is Oxford City Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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