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Speed up law mouldy homes law or more people will die, Gove warned
The Guardian|January 11, 2024
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has called on Michael Gove to accelerate a promised crackdown on landlords failing to fix tens of thousands of mouldy homes with a warning that unless laws are toughened many more people will die from the effects.
- Robert Booth
Speed up law mouldy homes law or more people will die, Gove warned

As the housing ombudsman reported increasing failures among landlords to properly tackle damp, mould and leaks in England's social housing, Prof Sir Stephen Holgate, special adviser on air quality to the RCP, warned of widening ill-health as more people inhale fungal toxins.

He said consequences include people suffering headaches, declining immunity and increased susceptibility among children to respiratory infections as well as deaths.

Prof Holgate said increased flooding, more householders keeping windows tightly shut to save energy and fungus becoming increasingly resilient to treatment - in homes as well as in the human body - as a result of widespread use of fungicides in farming, made reform more urgent.

In the nine months since March, the housing ombudsman for England, Richard Blakeway, made 721 findings of fault in how landlords tackled damp, mould and leaks, more than for the previous 12 months and several times more than in 2020-21.

This story is from the January 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the January 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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