COUNCIL tenants in Birmingham are flushed with anger after discovering a £9 million call centre cannot handle complaints about broken toilets.

Operators working for Service Birmingham at Fort Dunlop were supposed to be equipped with state-of-the-art computer systems.

But an on-screen tick box chart listing problems that residents might have in their homes left out one basic necessity.

Nowhere is there an option for call centre staff to record a blocked toilet or broken flushing mechanism, the council has disclosed.

The mistake means that toilet troubles cannot be relayed online to the housing department, resulting in lengthy delays before repairs can be carried out.

“There is no way to report this,” a council spokesman admitted.

Scrutiny committee members were furious when told it might take four weeks to re-write the computer programme.

Councillor John Alden (Con, Harborne) said: “All we need to do is get an option put in the tick box stating flushing mechanism is broken.

“We pay a fortune for IT systems, so surely this could be done straight away.

“Are we really saying it will take a month to fix this?”

Asha Patel, project manager for the council’s Customer First programme, said: “There is a comment box where additional information can be written.

“But a toilet flushing mechanism option is not on the menu.”