Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amber Yeoman, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Atmospheric Emissions, University of York

Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old child, died in 2020 after prolonged exposure to mould in his social housing association home. The inquest into his death found that, despite repeated reports by his parents about the property’s uninhabitable conditions, their concerns were dismissed and the housing association failed to take sufficient action.

In response to his tragic death, new legislation known as Awaab’s law now requires social housing associations in the UK to urgently address “all damp and mould hazards that present a significant risk of harm to tenants”.

This is a positive step forward in tackling damp and mould in social housing rented accommodation, which significantly contributes to poor indoor air quality. It also recognises that building occupants cannot always take the necessary actions to improve air quality themselves.

Read more:
Awaab’s law is a start but England needs whole new approach to ensure healthy homes for all

Efforts to maintain good indoor air quality often focus on changing individual behaviour, such as opening windows, using extractor fans and running dehumidifiers or air cleaners. While these measures can help, they are not always affordable or effective on their own. Even when occupants know there is a serious indoor air quality issue, which can have many sources such as mould, heating systems and building materials, they may lack the capability to do anything about it. This was the case for Awaab and his family, as the social housing association refused to act.

Our 2025 research paper explores how people’s ability – or capability – to make changes that improve air quality varies depending on housing tenure (for example, private rental, social housing, owner-occupied). In this context, capability refers to the level of control someone has to alter conditions that affect indoor air, such as fixing damp, improving ventilation, or replacing pollutant-emitting materials.

The figure below, also from our paper, shows the link between housing tenure type and capability. The blue bar represents the proportion of the English population living in each tenure type. The red bar below it shows how much control people have over sources of poor indoor air quality, with the most control on the right and the least on the left. Each box within the red bar represents a different activity or source that impacts air quality indoors.

Only one-third of these activities are accessible to those who do not own their home. Even property owners are often unable to influence major factors, such as the materials their house is built from or the outdoor air quality in their area. The activities that offer the least control, such as upgrading insulation, replacing heating systems, or renovating walls and floors to remove pollutant-emitting materials, usually require significant resources such as money, time and space. This highlights how unreasonable it is to blame household air quality issues on lifestyle choices when so many factors are outside an occupant’s control.

Awaab’s law acknowledges that renters face barriers to preventing and fixing damp and mould. It requires social housing associations to respond promptly to all reports of damp and mould, and it explicitly states that it is unacceptable to assume that these problems are caused by a tenant’s lifestyle. Housing associations are also prohibited from using lifestyle as an excuse for inaction.

In the future, Awaab’s law will expand to cover other hazards that tenants cannot easily control, such as extreme temperatures, falls, explosions, fires and electrical risks. However, it does not yet address other causes of poor indoor air quality, including building and decorating materials, heating systems and cooking practices. These sources can emit pollutants such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) – gases released from paints, varnishes, cleaning products and furniture – and particulate matter – tiny solid or liquid particles produced by activities such as cooking, heating and burning candles. Both can enter the lungs and bloodstream, contributing to breathing problems, allergies, heart disease and, over time, even cancer. These pollutants, then, can be just as harmful to health as damp and mould.

But, unlike mould, which can usually be identified by sight or smell, these pollutants often go unnoticed. A lack of understanding about these pollutants and their sources limits what occupants can do to improve air quality in their homes. So it is essential that people have access to clear information about potential pollutant sources, such as the products and furniture they buy. If this information is not readily available, the responsibility unfairly falls back on occupants once again.

Awaab’s law is an important recognition that tenants are not solely responsible for damp and mould in their homes. It will help protect some of the most vulnerable people living in uninhabitable conditions, yet it stops short of addressing other contributors to poor indoor air quality.

Understanding and tackling these wider issues would benefit everyone, regardless of housing tenure. These broader structural factors include the age and design of buildings, the quality of construction materials, housing regulations, and the social inequalities that limit tenants’ ability to make improvements. Until these underlying conditions are addressed, indoor air quality in the UK will not truly improve.

Amber Yeoman receives funding from UKRI and Defra.

Douglas Booker is the Co-Founder and CEO of NAQTS Ltd, a business that develops tools and technologies to provide holistic indoor air quality information. He receives funding from UKRI, NIHR, and EPSRC. He is affiliated with the Clean Air Champions team as part of SPF Clean Air Programme.

Faisal Farooq does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Who controls the air we breathe at home? Awaab’s law and the limits of individual actions – https://theconversation.com/who-controls-the-air-we-breathe-at-home-awaabs-law-and-the-limits-of-individual-actions-268060

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nikhil Datta, Assistant Professor, Economics, University of Warwick

The UK’s rental market has changed dramatically over recent decades, with the proportion of renters doubling to 30% since 2000. Over the same period, housing costs have increased far faster than wages.

Historically, the rental sector has faced less regulation in the UK than in many other European countries. But now new legislation aims to improve the security of tenancies in England and strengthen tenant protections against environmental hazards.

Many elements of the renters’ rights bill are likely to improve the lives of renters without harming landlords. But some of the improvements for tenants will make being a landlord more difficult or even, for some, undesirable. So far, we feel that the proposed measures fall into three groups – the good, the not-so-good, and the complicated.

The good

A government report from 2023 estimated that 3.6% of private rented properties had serious levels of damp and mould. One section of the bill will extend “Awaab’s law” (named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died as a result of living in a mould-infested home) to the private rental sector, offering protection to tenants in problem properties.

Also, a new private rental sector landlord ombudsman will be able to help tenants resolve disputes without slow and costly legal proceedings. The creation of a private rented sector database will improve transparency for tenant and compliance with pre-existing laws by landlords.

The not-so-good

The bill seeks to end the practice of “rental bidding”, where landlords can effectively maximise the rent they receive. Landlords and letting agents will not be allowed to accept more than the initial rent advertised.

In practice, many landlords may simply raise their initial asking rents so the new rule has little actual effect on the prices tenants face. Additionally, evidence from other markets, such as eBay, suggests that auction-style price setting has in many cases resulted in lower prices relative to simply posting a price.

As such, it is not clear this policy will have the intended effect. But the bill does also seek to regulate rent increases for incumbent tenants.

One of the most important parts of the bill is the abolition of “section 21 evictions” (so-called “no fault” evictions). Abolishing section 21 would leave landlords relying on what’s known as a “section 8 notice”, a written document used when a tenant has broken the rules of their rental agreement.

And while a section 8 does allow landlords to recover costs, it also requires a full court hearing. Yet evidence suggests that landlords are often willing to forego the prospect of reclaiming losses in order to get their property back quickly.

A key reason for this is the stretched court system and the length of time repossession can take (often as long as a year). The bill missed an opportunity to tackle costly court delays by creating a specialist housing court – something that could have been easily funded by a tiny levy on the UK’s annual £55 billion in rental income.

The complicated

Overall, the reforms are likely to increase the cost (and decrease the income) of being a landlord. This may push some landlords to leave the sector and change the composition of landlords active in the market. There is strong evidence of net market exit in the case of rent controls from other countries, including the US and Spain.

UK landlords have seen negative impacts on profits from several recent policies, including the phasing out of mortgage interest tax deductibility, stamp duty on second properties, and the 2019 Tenant Fees Act which banned letting fees in the private sector. Our own research on this found that landlords ended up paying about 25% of the fee previously covered by tenants.

Landlords quitting the sector is not necessarily a major concern, but how it affects the functioning of the market could be.

When landlords sell their properties, a key question is who buys them? Basic economics suggests that landlords exiting the sector reduces prices in the property market, making it possible for some renters to buy.

But the realities of the UK housing market mean things are not so simple. The large deposits required and limited access to mortgages and credit will still prevent many renters from being able to buy a home.

In any case, it would apply only to a small share of renters. If the reform increases the cost of becoming a landlord, it is likely that part of that increase will be passed over to tenants.

The UK letting market is dominated by “mom-and-pop” landlords (those with just a small number of properties), while other countries such as the US have seen a rise in institutional investors. It is possible that the bill could contribute to a similar rise in the UK, which could lead to higher rents as those big players are more able to exert market power.

The immediate effects of the bill may be modest. But a bigger concern lies ahead. Will lower house prices reduce construction activity and ultimately depress housing supply? This is certainly possible, but the government has other levers it can – and should – pull with regard to modernising the planning system and making construction cheaper. These measures could boost supply and improve affordability for both renters and buyers alike.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How new renters’ rights could drive landlords out of the market – https://theconversation.com/how-new-renters-rights-could-drive-landlords-out-of-the-market-267671

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Jeffery, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, University of Liverpool

Reform UK has positioned itself as the voice of discontent in British politics – a home for voters who feel both Labour and the Conservatives have lost touch with ordinary people.

Following elections in May, Reform is now a significant presence in local government with 921 councillors across England. The party pitched itself as an alternative to the traditional mainstream parties – we wanted to see whether this was actually the case on the local level.

We found Reform councillors to be less in favour of building in their local area and more interested in seeing government money spent on crime and policing than their colleagues from other parties.

This research is based on survey responses from councillors across the four largest parties — the Green party, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives — which we conducted as part of our report What Do British Politicians Think? A study into the views of MPs, councillors, and the public. The survey was carried out between January and February 2025 and we then conducted a follow-up survey of Reform UK councillors after the May local elections. This ran between August and September.

We rated the councillors’ responses to some questions on a 0-1 scale. When asked about immigration, for example, a rating of 0 suggests the councillor thought immigration too low, and 1 that they thought it too high. On this issue, Reform UK scored 1 – every councillor surveyed thought immigration had been too high.

Conservative councillors were not far off, with a score of 0.97. Labour and Liberal Democrats were roughly equal at 0.6 and 0.59 respectively, leaning towards too high, whereas Green councillors were slightly more likely to say immigration had been too low, with a placement of 0.44. This reflects one of the key dividing lines in British politics today, but also suggests that the more pro-immigration messages pushed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats nationally may not be overly popular among their councillor bases.

Labour councillors (perhaps reflecting the stated preferences of the party in government) were more in favour of ramping up building works than other parties. Tory and Reform councillors were more likely to oppose investment in large infrastructure projects in the UK if that also meant government borrowing had to increase significantly in order to fund them. Reform councillors were the most strongly opposed to a large increase in new housing in their area. The Conservatives and Greens were also more likely to be opposed while Lib Dems were somewhere in the middle. Labour councillors were, again, most in favour.

NHS, tax and spend, crime and policing

We found that 96% of Reform councillors think concerns over climate change have been exaggerated, compared to no Green councillors believing this (and just 3% of Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors). On whether the courts are too harsh, Reform councillors were most likely to say not harsh enough, followed by the Conservatives. The Greens are the least likely to say they are too harsh, whereas Labour and the Liberal Democrats are more toward the centre. On the issue of NHS provision, only the Conservative councillors leant towards privatisation. Reform followed behind but privatisation was still a minority view. The other parties all skewed towards maintaining public provision.

On tax and spend, the parties cluster more clearly – the Greens, Labour and Liberal Democrats want more tax and spending whereas the Conservatives and Reform both want a smaller state.

Asked in which areas the government should spend more money, the Conservatives and Reform councillors both selected the same top three areas (although not in the same order) – crime and policing, defence and education. Labour and the Liberal Democrats also chose the same three areas (again, not in the same order) – the NHS, local government and education. Green councillors chose the environment as the area most deserving of extra spending, followed by the NHS and with local government and education neck-and-neck.

Our polling suggests that a clear divide exists in local government along overlapping economic and cultural lines. Reform councillors typically take the most rightwing positions (except on the NHS), followed by the Conservatives, including on the tax and spend question. There is often little difference between Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the centre left/left, and then the Greens take the most leftwing position.

The one area where this does not hold up, however, is building. Here, the Greens become somewhat aligned with Reform and the Conservatives in their more sceptical views, whereas Labour and the Lib Dems are more in favour – reflecting tensions between environmental priorities, local preferences and economic growth.

The research presented in this report was made possible by funding from a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG24240513).

– ref. How England’s new Reform councillors compare in their views to other parties – https://theconversation.com/how-englands-new-reform-councillors-compare-in-their-views-to-other-parties-268011