The housing boss in charge of a mouldy home which killed two-year-old Awaab Ishak is facing growing pressure to quit, as the social housing watchdog launched an investigation into possible “systemic” failings and an MP accused his organisation of being a “modern-day slumlord”.
The housing secretary, Michael Gove, spoke to Gareth Swarbrick on Wednesday and told parliament it was “clear … there are systemic problems in the governance and leadership” of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) which looks after more than 12,000 homes. He previously said it “beggars belief” Swarbrick was still in his post.
Chris Clarkson, MP for Middleton, labelled RBH a “slumlord” in a parliamentary debate about the infant’s death in December 2020 and revealed that constituents living in an RBH property only this week sent him photos of walls “caked in black mould” which their doctor concluded made two children “severely ill”.
Diane Abbott was among other MPs expressing fury at the scale of mould and damp problems afflicting constituents nationwide and she said if the housing chief “had any conscience, he would resign”.
The shadow housing secretary, Lisa Nandy, said “constituency surgeries are absolutely overflowing … with people … who sounded the alarm … [and have] been rendered invisible by decision makers who do not respond”.
Barbara Keeley, MP for Worsley and Eccles South, said she received more than 40 complaints a year from constituents “worried sick about persistent mould”, with children and babies’ health affected “very badly”.
Paulette Hamilton, MP for Birmingham Erdington, represents a family living in a mouldy home for four years that “was so bad that they had mushrooms growing in their bathroom”. And Janet Daby, MP for Lewisham East, had a 52-year-old man “crying down the phone” last month with breathing problems due to the damp and mould.
Swarbrick, the £157,000 a year chief executive of RBH, said he was “truly devastated about Awaab’s death and the things we got wrong” after a coroner found exposure to persistent black mould on the walls of the family’s rented home in Rochdale were a cause of the infant’s death and that the landlord had repeatedly failed to fix it.
In a statement to parliament, Gove said the landlord’s leadership had “presided over a terrible situation” and its failure to heed the family’s pleas to remove the mould was a “dereliction of duty”. Following the family’s claim that they were subject to racism, Gove said: “This family were victims of prejudice.”
Asked about Swarbrick’s position, Kelly Darlington, the solicitor for Awaab’s family, said: “I think he needs to take responsibility and there needs to be some accountability from Rochdale Boroughwide Housing overall.”
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, called on the government to give him new powers to improve housing standards across the city-region. He said: “It is hard to imagine the anguish felt by Awaab’s parents, and we owe it to them to ensure that there is full accountability for the failings, missed opportunities and lack of compassion shown in this case on the part of those responsible.”
Richard Blakeway, the housing ombudsman for England, meanwhile invoked powers to allow inspectors to interview staff and board members at RBH after he discovered three other complaints about damp and mould in the landlord’s homes which have been assessed as high- or medium-risk. He told Swarbrick in a letter he was investigating whether one of the complaints “is indicative of wider failure within the landlord”.
The coroner, Joanne Kearsley, who on Tuesday said Awaab’s death should be a “defining moment” for the UK’s housing sector, on Wednesday formally demanded action to prevent future deaths.
In a four-page report, she told Gove and the health secretary, Steve Barclay, that guidance for ensuring decent homes failed to consider damp and mould, and adequate ventilation; housing safety ratings understate the health risk of mould; and people in private rented housing have no recourse to the housing ombudsman to independently investigate their complaints. She gave the cabinet ministers 56 days to respond.
After reporting the mould in 2017, Awaab’s father, Faisal Abdullah, who had arrived from Sudan, was told to paint over it. A health visitor twice wrote to RBH in 2020 expressing concern about the mould and the negative health effects it could have.
But Kearsley found “no action was taken and, from July 2020 until December 2020, Awaab continued to have chronic exposure to harmful mould”.
Christian Weaver, the family’s barrister at the inquest, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that the family had pleaded for help to tackle the problem of mould in their flat.
“There’s absolutely no excuse … The overriding thing the family have been saying is, ‘We were powerless, we were screaming, we were crying out for help, but nothing was being done.’ As you can imagine, they are distraught.”
RBH confirmed that Swarbrick spoke with Gove but said: “We cannot provide a further comment at this time.”.
Official figures suggest 120,000 households are living in social housing in England that has problems with condensation and mould, three times the proportion in privately owned homes. About 176,000 private-renting households are also living with mould, although a survey by the housing charity Shelter puts the number higher, with mould affecting nearly 653,000 private-renting families. Blakeway is calling for a law change to create an ombudsman for private renters and Gove told parliament he would consider it. He also said he would increase resources for the watchdog to pursue cases.
Nandy urged Gove to set up an investigation into the treatment of refugees in the housing system and the role that racism may have played in the treatment of Awaab and his family. She said government figures showed households with the highest rates of overcrowding were in minority ethnic groups.
