Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that social housing providers tackle cases of damp and mould.

The Charter for Social Housing Residents: Social Housing White Paper set out commitments on how we will improve the lives of social housing residents including on housing quality.

We are working with the Regulator of Social Housing to create a strong, proactive consumer regulatory regime, strengthening the formal standards against which landlords are regulated, requiring them to be transparent about their performance so they can be held to account, to put things right when they go wrong and to listen to tenants through effective engagement. The Housing Ombudsman Service has been expanded and its powers increased so it will make decisions more quickly and can take stronger action against landlords where needed. These new powers enabled the publication of the Housing Ombudsman's recent important report on damp and mould which made 26 recommendations for landlords including greater use of intelligence and data to prevent issues; reviewing communications with tenants to improve tone and making better use of previous complaints and disrepair claims so landlords can learn from them.

Social homes must be safe and decent. A key commitment of the Social Housing White Paper was to review the Decent Homes Standard. Part 1 of this review is underway and has considered how any revised Standard can help tackle damp and mould.