The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has sent "a clear message to social landlords that they must deal with damp and mould as the serious hazards that they are, treat tenants with respect, and take their concerns seriously".

The message comes as the RSH published the findings of its investigation into Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) following the death of 2 year old Awaab Ishak resulting from living in an RBH property riddled with damp and mould.

RBH's failings effectively amounted to a breach of the Govt's decent homes standard guidance and led to the RSH downgrading RBH to a "non-compliant" social housing provider. The investigation found that RBH's failings were systemic across the organisation and affected 100s of their properties and the regulator said that it "expects all social landlords to learn lessons from the case". Although the regulator, obviously, does not deal with private rented sector (PRS) landlords, the "lessons learned" warning could just as easily apply to those landlords also, especially as the Decent Homes Standard is going to be applied to PRS landlords and their properties.

The regulator pointed out that even after Awaab's death it took RBH nearly 2 years to inspect other properties in its estate portfolio after which it found 100s of other properties in the same state as Awaab's home was - thus RBH "failed to act quickly and protect more tenants from potential harm"; wider failings within RBH meant that it couldn't provide adequate information to the regulator on how it dealt with damp and mould and this undermined RBH's credibility as well as exposing significant organisational failings; IT and internal communication failings [i.e. record keeping and dissemination of information] meant vital information - which could have identified risks earlier - was missed; RBH made incorrect assumptions about the cause of the damp and mould which meant Awaab's family, and possibly other tenants, were not rated with fairness and respect. In other words, it shouldn't be automatically assumed that "tenant lifestyle" is the cause of damp and mould in a home.

PRS landlords, especially those subject to selective licensing scheme conditions (or HMO and additional licensing conditions) will need to keep the thinking of this regulator in mind when encountering issues of damp and mould in their own properties and complying with relevant standards. This is evidence of the current direction of travel as far as regulators are concerned.

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