Councils miss target on damp and mould repairs

Two councils that manage nearly 7,000 homes between them have failed to meet targets to deal with damp and mould under new regulations, according to a report.

Under Awaab's Law, social landlords should, from October 2025, repair emergency hazards, such as mould, reported to them within 24 hours.

Mid Suffolk District Council and Babergh District Council were only able to resolve 63% and 78% of hazards respectively in the required timeframe.

David White, the head of housing transformation and regulation at both councils, said achieving a 100% resolution rate was "challenging", and that they also had some reporting issues with contractors.

The councils, who share back office services, have been undergoing a transformation process to improve their housing stock, which totals 6,907 properties, and the way they respond to and carry out repairs.

White said: "Over the last 18 months we have implemented over 40 new contracts with repairs, assets and asset management because we had none before, and we were doing it on a piece-by-piece basis. We had none of the performance measure in the contract."

Mandeep Bhogil, the interim director of housing at the councils, said they were now "embedding" the new contractors and "finessing" the data they could extract from them.

The Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee was told they would be able to see the outcomes of this work in the next report in three months' time.

It also heard how both councils had carried out a full survey of their properties to understand which ones did not meet the Decent Homes Standard.

The councils' target is 1% but in Mid Suffolk 13% of homes do not meet the standard, and for Babergh it is 12% - a total of 860 homes across the two areas.

James Caston, the chairman of the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee, sits as an independent on Mid Suffolk District Council.

He acknowledged that there was still a way to go before the councils were where they needed to be, but said: "I feel we are moving in the right direction."

Caston said he had known getting access to properties was making it hard to report an accurate situation, and praised the housing team for "moving 60 homes into the Decent Homes Standard in Mid Suffolk and a similar amount in Babergh".

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