Death of Awaab Ishak shows housing failures can't keep going unchecked - Jayne Dowle

This tragic two-year-old lost his life in the place where he should feel safest of all, home. Failure on the part of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), the organisation responsible for the property, cannot go unchecked.

In an impressively muscular response, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, has demanded to see the organisation’s boss.

“When you have got a situation where you have a young child in a house that is unfit for human habitation, it is a basic responsibility of the local authority - but particularly the housing association - to make sure that people are in decent homes,” said Mr Gove, who has two teenagers of his own.

“All this what-aboutery, all this, ‘Oh, if only we had more government money’. Do your job, man.”

I like it. It’s about time somebody with the power to make a difference about the shocking ‘haves and have-nots’ divide in British housing talked tough.

Despite the government’s ‘decent homes’ standard, the latest English Housing Survey - commissioned by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities - found 3.5 million homes failed to reach the minimum requirement. Of those, 2.2 million contain a Category 1 hazard; they present the highest risk of serious harm or death.

The health of millions of people is being threatened by the homes they live in. This is not just costing lives, but money. Recent research by the Building Research Establishment estimated that illness caused by poor housing gives the NHS in England a bill of £1.4bn a year.

Awaab’s sad fate illustrates ineptitude on the highest possible scale. His father had repeatedly raised the issue of the flat’s condition with RBH, but no action was taken – a legal dispute relating to disrepair was held as the cause of the delay.

Unbelievably, when Mr Abdullah first reported mould developing to RBH in 2017, he was told to paint over it.

An apprentice damp-proofer would tell you that this is the absolute worst thing you can do with mould. And like Mr Gove, I’m absolutely appalled that RBH’s boss, chief executive Gareth Swarbrick, still has his job. And he even got a pay rise. RBH's financial reports show Mr Swarbrick's salary increased from £170,000 to £185,000 the year after Awaab's death.

Speaking to broadcasters in the wake of the coroner’s verdict, Mr Gove said it “beggars belief” that RBH’s chief executive had not been sacked.

But that’s local councils and their many tentacles for you. In any private company, such dereliction of duty would not be tolerated. However, in too many public sector cases, people are barely doing what they’re paid exorbitantly for, coasting by and raking in not just eye-watering salaries but generous pay-offs and pensions too, whilst others scrape by on the minimum wage.

Senior coroner Joanne Kearsley insists that the death of Awaab, who suffered prolonged exposure to the fatal black growth which covered the walls, cupboards, ceilings and floors of his home, should be a “defining moment” for the housing sector.

And rightly so. How many Awaabs must die before housing associations, and profiteering neglectful private landlords, fail to act or continue to dismiss concerns of tenants to avoid taking action – and spending money?

Giving her findings, Ms Kearsley said: “I’m sure I’m not alone in having [this] thought, ‘How does this happen? How, in the UK in 2020 [the year of Awaab’s death], does a two-year-old child die from exposure to mould in his home?’

“The tragic death of Awaab will and should be a defining moment for the housing sector in terms of increasing knowledge, increasing awareness and a deepening of understanding surrounding the issue of damp and mould.”

And what of the local council? “We must make sure this can never happen again”, Swarbrick insisted in a statement following the verdict. “We have and will continue to learn hard lessons from this.”

That’s the very least he could say. However, the truth is, it is definitely still happening, in every town and city in the land.

And it will continue to happen until local councils do their job properly, attend to the properties they retain responsibility for and hold negligent private landlords to account.