Jon Vanstone talks about the industry’s need to change attitudes towards regulations and accept that best practice is promoted to protect us all, not intended as a headache.

There is a lot of bad news around right now – the war in Ukraine continues, political turmoil, and many UK families are facing a crisis over rising energy costs and our poor economic recovery from the pandemic.

Of all the recent headlines, one has particularly stuck with me – the news that a two-year-old child living in Rochdale died from a respiratory condition that was caused by exposure to mould in his own home.

Awaab Ishak died in December 2020, and a coroner recently ruled that the ventilation in the one-bedroom property provided by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) was not effective and was a direct contributing factor in the development of mould in the property, which eventually had such a devasting result on his family.

Following this news, the Property Care Association (PCA) has called for more stringent reinforcement of the regulations to tackle mould and damp, citing that members were seeing a ‘significant rise’ in issues with excess moisture in properties across the UK.

And they are correct, our homes are tighter, and moisture needs to go somewhere before it is absorbed into the fabric of the building.

There has been a strong response from Government too. Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove MP, announced in the Commons: “The time for empty promises of improvement is over…my department will now name and shame those who have been found by the regulator to have breached consumer standards or who have been found by the ombudsman to have committed severe maladministration.”

As a nation, we have entered the age of ‘humid homes’. We have spent years making properties airtight and super-insulated to reduce heat loss, save energy and have more energy-efficient buildings. We might all feel warmer, but this has caused a counter issue, and our indoor air quality is impacted.

Without sufficient ventilation we have a build-up of moisture in our homes which comes from our everyday life activities – showering, cooking, making a coffee, drying clothes, and even breathing. In a well-ventilated home, the moisture in the air can leave the property – through extraction systems, background ventilation methods such as trickle vents or by regularly opening a window. Without ventilation, we see high levels of humidity leading to mould and mildew, which can damage properties and their occupants.

I think it’s clear that the window-opening method would not have done enough in the case of the Ishak family’s tragic loss. It required intervention from RBH to make improvements to the property to provide better living conditions for this young family.

There are many issues that this sad news brings to light, but I think there are two main areas where our industry can help. Firstly, we must improve consumer education on the importance of proper ventilation, not just looking at the short-term benefits but also at the potential issues that poor ventilation can cause in the long run. We are on the front line of this, with a product set based around the fundamental element of making homes healthier.

Secondly, we need to look at how the minimum requirements set out in Approved Documents are being interpreted and implemented by the people we trust with our home improvement projects.

I have no doubt that this tragedy will trigger further discussions around ventilation and how Approved Document F should be enforced by the Building Safety Regulator moving forward, so we can expect further pressure on our contribution to well-ventilated homes in the future.

Indeed, with the Future Homes Standards working group looking at greater requirements for 2025 the glazing industry promoted rhetoric of the need for a five-year innovation period may well put us out of step once more with legislation.

There are very tough lessons to be learned from this tragedy. Perhaps the one for the Repair, Maintenance and Improvement sector is that when we feel that new regulations are a ‘headache’ or simply something introduced by Government to make life difficult for our industry, we need to remember stories like that of Awaab Ishak and work together so that we never see a repeat of them.