Following a recent BBC Panorama analysis of NHS England data, it has been revealed that more than 26,000 babies and toddlers were admitted to hospital last year with lung conditions likely linked to damp and mould. This alarming figure highlights the risks posed by substandard housing and the critical need for local authority oversight in the private rented sector. In Home Safe’s experience of conducting property inspections on behalf of local authorities, over a third of properties inspected have issues with damp and mould, often unnoticed or unreported until tenants' health is already affected. Furthermore, inspections routinely uncover cases where landlords have applied for a property licence using false EPCs to apply for a licence or expired gas safety certificates, with many hazards only coming to light once an inspection takes place under a licensing scheme. These findings highlight a concerning issue—one that is only exposed when proper enforcement mechanisms, such as inspections, are in place.

A stark example of what happens when these problems go unchecked can be seen in the case of Roach Estates, a Liverpool letting agency whose directors were found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court of operating a rental property in conditions so poor that the District Judge described it as a “slum.” The judge issued fines of nearly £14,000 for non-compliance with an improvement notice—yet another reminder of the dangers tenants face when landlords fail to maintain safe living conditions. Without proactive oversight, properties like this remain unsafe, putting tenants, especially vulnerable families, at risk.

Amongst the litany of dangerous conditions found at the property by council officers were “damp and mould growth from damaged brickwork to the front bay lintel, and a flat roof allowing leaks into the kitchen; Broken gutters and waste water discharging directly onto the flat roof; The kitchen ceiling was bowing under the flat roof and the ceiling has now collapsed; An open fuse box with live wiring and an intermittent electrical supply; Exposed wiring and a missing light fitting in the kitchen where water has dripped through the roof”.

Liverpool Council’s Private Sector Housing Service served an improvement notice on the landlord but on reinspecting the property found that adequate works had not been done to rectify the hazards discovered by council officers and further deterioration had in fact taken place at the address.

Cllr. Sam East, the council’s Cabinet Member for Housing, said that the tenants had had to endure “terrible conditions” and added that "This is exactly the type of issue that our Landlord Licensing scheme is designed to tackle and it sends out a strong signal to the sector…. ".

This case is yet another example of the importance to public health, safety and well being of carrying out inspections of properties that are subject to selective licensing and additional licensing scheme requirements. The British Medical Journal, Building Research Establishment (BRE), the government’s Chief Medical Officer as well as Members of Parliament have all recently highlighted the impact of poor housing conditions on public health. The Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report for 2024 - ‘Health in Cities’ - states “There are collective responsibilities for health and wellbeing boards, integrated care systems, local authority housing and planning departments …. including for local health systems to consider the importance of improving housing conditions to prevent and reduce the burden of ill health through the inclusion of housing in joint strategic needs assessments ….”

That housing-related “burden of ill health” (referred to as “burden of disease” in other reports), according to estimates by the BRE, amounts to £1.4 billion a year in terms of hospital treatment costs and a further £15 billion in long term societal costs. These “societal costs” include, amongst others, the detrimental impacts on employment, educational and mental health outcomes due to ill health caused by living in a property afflicted by damp and mould.

Whilst the damp and mould in the Liverpool prosecution were directly caused by penetrating damp rather than condensation or the result of poor energy efficiency per se, it is likely that the property, given its very poor, slumlike condition, was also energy inefficient. The point is, these serious defects and the concomitant risk of serious ill health or injury being inflicted on the tenants were discovered in the course of the property being inspected. The protection of tenant health can’t be guaranteed via property documentation alone.