Awaab Ishak: a death to shame the nation

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell describes the “smoke-dim” slums of northern England in the 1930s, said The Times – with their bug-infested bedrooms and dripping walls. Our world has been transformed since then, but the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak is a stark reminder that millions of people in Britain are still living in appalling conditions, at the mercy of bad landlords.

The child of refugee parents from Sudan, Awaab was born in Rochdale in 2018. By then his father had already reported that black mould was growing on the walls of their poorly ventilated one-bedroom flat. The landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), had told him to paint over it; he did, but the mould returned, and spread.

He kept emailing, and a health visitor also sent RBH two letters stressing the risk to children of exposure to black mould. But no repairs were made. Awaab suffered from a series of coughs and colds, and in December 2020 he was admitted to hospital with breathing problems. Days later, he was dead. A post mortem revealed evidence of fungus in his lungs.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Coroner ruling

At his inquest last week, the coroner concluded that the child had died as a result of prolonged exposure to mould, said John Elledge in The New Statesman. In the wake of her verdict, the chief executive of RBH was fired from his £185,000 a year job. But the conditions that led to this tragedy are not confined to Rochdale. Some 450,000 homes in England are blighted by condensation and mould.

Landlords like to imply that it is caused by “lifestyle” factors, as if tenants had chosen to live in this way. (An RBH officer made the unfounded assumption that their damp was partly down to Awaab’s parents engaging in “ritual bathing”.) But no one chooses to live in homes where walls are black with mould, and kids sleep in tents to avoid inhaling spores. These are just the homes that are available to them in a country that doesn’t build enough affordable new homes, or do enough to ensure that landlords, social and private sector, meet even basic standards.

Decline in standards

Standards have fallen to the point where 200,000 social housing homes have a potentially fatal “category one hazard”, said Hannah Fearn in The Independent; poor housing costs the NHS an estimated £1.4bn a year.

The Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove, has vowed to “name and shame” poor landlords, said Nigel Crisp in The Times. But this is mere “window dressing”. What we need, as a start, is better regulation to ensure new homes are fit for human habitation; and proper enforcement of existing regulations. “Shelter and food are basic human needs. No nation that neglects them can expect to prosper.”