I am grateful to
mc2fool for providing the links to the Coroner's
Findings and Conclusions, her
Report to Prevent Future Deaths and the referenced
Report on Damp and Mould produced by the Housing Ombudsman.
The main things that I conclude as a private landlord from both the reports noted above and other documents such as the Decent Homes Standard and HHSRS are:
- The health risks associated with mould are generally not well enough appreciated (either generally across the public as a whole or specifically by landlords and tenants). Whilst I was previously aware that exposure to mould could be harmful to people who suffered from conditions such as asthma, I was not aware that it could potentially be fatal for young children. I suspect that one consequence of raising awareness of this will be to make life harder for people with young children. Landlords may well become more reluctant to have them as tenants.
- Regular property inspections are vital for identifying both emergent building faults (eg guttering problems) and behavioural issues leading to mould and damp issues within a property. When I started out as a landlord I took the mistaken view that the tenant's right to quiet enjoyment over-rode my requirements to ensure that all was well. I changed that view when I became a member of the National Landlord's Association and quickly took their advice. Part of the Housing Ombudsman's recommendations about damp and mould to Housing Associations were that they should take a more pro-active and less reactive approach. For private (and generally much smaller) landlords property inspections (rather than sole reliance on tenants reporting problems) are the practical way of being pro-active.
- Tenant education about the causes and consequences of excessive condensation and the need for adequate ventilation is essential and needs to take place at the outset of a tenancy rather than when problems start to emerge. Most of my tenants are HE students. Whilst that means that they are quite often a bit young and naive and sometimes ignorant about how things such as boilers are intended to work, they are usually very good at reading things. Included in my tenant information pack is a section on condensation and ventilation which includes information provided by the housing team from the local authority. I routinely provide portable dehumidifiers along with guidance about when and where to use them and have even installed passive whole-house ventilation systems in a property where it was practical to do this.
The coroner listed five concerns in her report on prevention of future deaths (sent to Michael Gove, Minister for Housing and Steve Barclay, Minister for Health). These were:
- The 2006 document, "A Decent Home: Definition and Guidance for Implementation" does not give any consideration to the issue of damp and mould. Nor does it provide any guidance as to the need for a property to be adequately ventilated.
- The HHSRS data sheet relating to damp and mould, is used to calculate risks of the incident and the spread of harm is not reflective of the current known risks of damp and mould and harm to health.
- There was no evidence that up to date relevant health information pertaining to the risks of damp and mould was easily accessible to the housing sector.
- The evidence highlighted a "policy" amongst the housing associations, in cases where a disrepair claim has been brought of waiting for agreement from the claimant (or their legal representative) before rectifying any recognised disrepair.
- The private landlord sector does not have access to the Housing Ombudsman for their complaints to be investigated independently.
Since 1997 there have been 21 housing ministers (see
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight ... 1997-65065 ,
https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers ... housing--2 and
https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers ... ommunities) - an average of 1 every 15 months and less than this in recent times. So, even if Gove responds positively to each of the coroner's concerns, I suspect there will be little practical impact on landlords in the private rented sector until and unless Labour gets back into office. The sclerotic pace of reform is illustrated by the fact that the renter's reform bill (abolishing Section 21 no-fault evictions) was first mooted back in 2019 by Theresa May's government but there is still no bill in front Parliament three and half years later.
As to concern 5, where the PRS gets a specific mention, it will be interesting to see what happens. My suspicion is that, even if there is a commitment to "do something", between them the landlord associations and the Civil Service will simply get this moved to the too difficult box and it will be quietly shelved. The Housing Ombudsman is oriented to dealing with large organisations (it measures landlord size in thousands of units) and it would have to acquire a very different set of procedures and practices to deal with small private landlords (half of whom have only 1 property).
The coroner's summary of Findings and Conclusions mentions a couple of specific matters which caught my eye but which do not appear in the list of concerns. Both are about information sharing where inadequacies in both the landlord (Rochdale Boroughwide Housing) and the local health/social care system (health visitors, community midwife, GP, hospitals attended) were identified as contributory factors. A missed opportunity, IMHO.
Mike4 is of course right in drawing attention to the conflict between making houses airtight (in the interests of energy conservation) and well-ventilated. But then public policy is always difficult to get right. Not so long ago diesel engines were being encouraged in cars (through the vehicle tax system) over their petrol equivalents because they had lower CO2 emissions. Then someone noticed the impact on air quality and people's health of NOX emissions ...
modellingman