Damp and mould is an ongoing problem for housing providers and their customers; what are the biggest challenges and how can data help them?
During early 2023, Housemark ran a series of pilot projects with our members, following the addition of a specific damp and mould feature to our Photobook inspection tool. The number of pilots should have been higher, but 45 per cent of those lined up to take part pulled out, which brings us to the first challenge – a lack of resources.
Resource restraints
With approximately 4.9 million social housing properties across the UK managed by 1,600 organisations, we know that lack of resources within housing providers is a huge barrier to proactively dealing with damp and mould. It can even result in extra costs, with specialist surveyors being contracted to carry out inspections that in-house teams don’t have the capacity or knowledge to deal with.
Housing providers need to be realistic; they simply can’t do everything they need to do themselves to reduce the numbers and effects of damp and mould with the resources they have.
Add in another winter without action and we’ll see further escalation of the problem. That’s why we need to get a handle on the second challenge – knowing your data.
A matrix of priorities
According to the Social Housing Act 2023, “landlords will need to demonstrate how they’re providing good quality homes and services for tenants”. But we can’t tackle damp and mould effectively without understanding our homes.
Our pilot projects found that to understand and predict the behaviour of our housing stock, we need to gather a staggering 47 pieces of data for each property. As well as moisture readings taken in homes, the necessary data to begin to predict the behaviour of our homes includes repairs, stock-condition reports, tenant interactions, effects of weather, geography, construction materials and insulation, EPC ratings and more.
Compiling almost 50 data points for each of our homes sounds daunting, but we know that much of the required information (often as much as half) is already held by housing providers. The challenge is bringing it together into an easy-to-use, predictive and intuitive system. Thanks to progress in AI and algorithms, we are in a good place to do this.
Having meticulously categorised the crucial data into 10 key areas to tackle damp and mould effectively, we can help housing providers with collating their data and using it effectively. This will allow them to create a ‘prioritisation matrix’ for their homes, ensuring resources aren’t wasted, and instead moving towards a prediction-based modelling system which can improve the efficiency of inspections and inform management strategy and long-term financial planning.
Furthermore, targeting finance and workforce effectively where it’s really needed can also free up resources to tackle our next challenge – residents’ buy-in.
Our strongest advocates
Working with housing providers across the country, we see that bringing tenants on board with damp and mould prevention (without placing unrealistic expectations on them) is not only an area of concern but also a huge opportunity to foster a collaborative approach and change perceptions of social housing.
Treated correctly, our residents can be our strongest advocates, and right now we need to get them on board to help us tackle this problem. Ensuring they have all the information they need to identify the early signs of damp and mould, and how to report and deal with it promptly, is vital in reducing the number of cases and the effects of mould, which can spread very quickly if not dealt with straight away.
This two-pronged approach, leveraging data intelligence and enhancing tenant cooperation, is essential for sustainable resolutions to damp and mould. Asset and maintenance teams will benefit from predictive analytics and housing teams, once freed up from complaints and work generated by damp and mould cases, can refocus on advising and empowering tenants, particularly those who may need extra support in mitigating damp and mould.
Identify, monitor and predict to prevent
There’s no denying the numbers on tackling damp and mould are daunting. But a lasting change is possible with the use of intelligent and coordinated data. Our vision is to provide the sector with the means to gather and use this data; a specialist solution designed with housing providers and damp and mould specialists which actively scans and analyses data to detect, rank and predict potential damp and mould hotspots.
Another winter will see another surge in cases, so the sooner we get on top of the problem the better. With effective use of robust data, we can move to a more proactive and preventative system that starts to bring the numbers down and ensures our residents’ safety.
Zack Hodge is the head of Photobook at Housemark.
