At least two members of the ruling coalition at Birmingham City Council — including a sitting cabinet member — hold direct financial interests in the city’s supported exempt accommodation sector, a system that now draws more than £410 million annually in enhanced housing benefits and has been described by West Midlands Police as the single greatest driver of crime and public safety concerns in Birmingham. The evidence, drawn from the council’s public register of declared interests and supplemented by corporate filings and direct inquiries, reveals a structural accountability gap at the heart of local governance: elected officials who bear responsibility for overseeing this sector stand to profit from it.
The supported exempt accommodation sector — commonly abbreviated as SEA — operates on a model in which providers receive significantly elevated housing benefit payments, ostensibly to fund specialist support for vulnerable tenants. Birmingham hosts more than 13,000 such properties. Prior investigations have documented a pattern of poorly vetted tenants, inadequate support provision, and serious harm to surrounding communities. A BBC Panorama broadcast this week examined the roles of central government, the council, and private providers in the sector’s dramatic expansion. The question of who, within the council itself, benefits financially from that expansion has received far less scrutiny.
A review of the public register of declared interests — a legal mechanism established under the Localism Act 2011, requiring councillors to disclose financial and employment interests within 28 days of taking office — reveals that no councillor explicitly identifies the SEA sector by name. Several register general property interests, landlord status, or rental income, but the register’s utility as a transparency instrument is materially undermined by a series of dispensations granted by the council’s monitoring officer, which have resulted in certain entries being either redacted entirely or withheld on grounds of sensitivity. The effect is to render meaningful public scrutiny impossible in precisely the cases where it matters most.
Councillor Harris Khaliq, cabinet member for city operations and digital and leader of the Better Birmingham Independents — a group whose seven members joined with the Greens and Liberal Democrats to form the minority coalition now governing the council — confirmed, when directly questioned, that he owns two additional properties beyond his primary residence. One is a flat rented privately; the other is a house leased through an agent to an exempt accommodation provider, generating monthly rental income. His public register entry discloses only that a dispensation has been granted to keep his home address and “beneficial properties” private. In a written statement, Khaliq argued that holding a property interest does not preclude him from supporting stronger regulation of the sector, and he declared support for new legislation and greater accountability. He also noted, in a formulation that carries its own weight, that he “reserves all legal rights in relation to anything published” about him.
Councillor Morriam Jan of the Liberal Democrats, representing Perry Barr and serving as the group’s Chief Whip, presents a more complex picture. Jan has a professional background in housing management and has previously worked with exempt and HMO-style properties. Her current register of interests makes no reference to property whatsoever, listing only a directorship of Jan Consultancy. Corporate filings at Companies House show that entity dissolved in December 2024, and that a new company, Civicbridge Advisory Ltd, was incorporated in February of this year. More significantly, Jan is currently serving as interim chief executive of Concept Housing Association, a social housing provider that the national Regulator of Social Housing recently subjected to enforcement action following findings of multiple regulatory failures — including an instruction to engage a specialist insolvency expert to plan for the organisation’s potential wind-down. That role had not appeared in Jan’s public register of declared interests as of the time of publication, though the council’s monitoring officer is understood to have been informed. Jan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Councillor Jamil Khan, also of the Better Birmingham Independents and serving as deputy cabinet member for community safety, holds an extensive property portfolio and multiple company directorships accumulated prior to his election in May this year. His register entry has been redacted in its entirety, marked as “sensitive,” making it impossible to determine whether any of his holdings generate income from the exempt sector. Khan confirmed the existence of significant property interests across the city and stated that properties in his portfolio “may be leased to other operators,” though he characterised his role as that of a passive investor rather than an active operator. He and Khaliq both withdrew from a full council meeting in July when exempt housing came before the chamber, citing a declared interest — an act of procedural compliance that simultaneously confirms the relevance of those interests to council business.
The legal framework is clear in its intent if not always in its enforcement. The Localism Act 2011 and associated local codes of conduct exist precisely to prevent elected officials from participating in decisions that touch their financial interests. The dispensation mechanism, originally conceived to protect councillors’ home addresses in an era of heightened personal security threats, has been extended in practice to obscure interests that fall well short of requiring address disclosure. The council’s monitoring officer is understood to be conducting a review of what councillors should be required to declare. That review cannot arrive soon enough.
The deeper problem is structural. Birmingham’s exempt housing sector has expanded at a pace that outstripped regulatory oversight, generating substantial income for a wide range of actors — some operating responsibly, many not. When those who sit in judgment of the sector’s future also receive income from it, the integrity of the oversight process is compromised regardless of individual intent. Transparency is not an optional courtesy in this context; it is the minimum condition for legitimate governance.