Working with L&Q

But the problem was two-fold: there was damp and mould itself and the effect it was having on residents’ health; and then there was the issue of determining the extent of that problem.

For landlords with already limited resources in a post-Grenfell environment dominated by concerns around fire safety and cladding, the second part of the problem was critical. Tackling damp and mould on a case-by-case basis is one thing, but knowing what to do with a large portfolio of properties is a different matter.

At the same time, many social landlords were also starting to see increasing numbers of residents struggling with fuel poverty. This is where a pioneering British tech company called ZapCarbon stepped in.

ZapCarbon had been working with social landlords in London on improving energy efficiency in their homes since 2006. Having collected information from tens of thousands of homes, Zap’s operatives began to notice something important.

We started to realise there was a really strong correlation between fuel poverty, residents struggling to keep their homes warm and mould. It came up in our team meetings that there seemed to be a lot of residents struggling with black mould, and in some cases it was really bad. Fast forward a few years and it’s become well established that mould growth is highly dependent on how a building is heated, how much humidity builds up, and the way in which the space is ventilated.
– Dale Holroyd, Chief Executive at ZapCarbon

ZapCarbon took this revelation to its social housing partners, including L&Q, with whom it launched a small investigative pilot focusing initially on just 200 homes. But once the correlation was established, L&Q began to realise the scale of the problem for the first time. Vicky Holland, L&Q’s head of special projects and sustainability, explains how the pilot changed the landlord’s thinking about the problem:

The principle behind the service is not to just treat mould it when it occurs but to make sure it never comes back. To do this, they have developed a four-phase approach encompassing monitoring, home visits, mould removal and resident support.

In the first phase, ZapCarbon installs smart IoT sensors in properties. These then provide round the clock data on air quality, temperature and humidity, with the aim of identifying unhealthy living conditions that could give rise to damp and mould. To date, nearly 17,000 L&Q homes have been fitted with these sensors.

The next step is to use that data to decide whether to go to an individual property to assess the situation – even before the resident is aware of a mould problem. This assessment phase sees specially trained staff carry out bespoke sets of checks to ascertain each home’s damp and mould risk.

The HealthyHomes sensors take just 4 minutes to install, and require no mains or WiFi connection.

Following this assessment, mould is treated with a specially developed non-toxic, child and pet safe shield that both kills the mould and makes it harder for it to resurface. This patented ‘HealthyHomes Shield’ keeps the property free of mould for longer than standard cleaning products, giving more time for a repairs team to complete any work needed to ensure the home stays safe and healthy.

The final and perhaps most important phase is all about ongoing resident engagement. Through a programme called HealthyHomes Empower, residents are supported in developing a tailored action plan aimed at improving their home environment over the long term. Engagement comes through phone and text support, alongside visits for those homes assessed as at higher risk.

The idea behind this final phase is to give residents the tools to make changes for themselves that will keep damp and mould at bay and create a healthier home.

ZapCarbon’s ‘HealthyHomes’ system has revolutionised how L&Q understands its damp and mould problem. In the past, the landlord had treated mould on a case-by-case basis, providing residents complaining of an outbreak with a wash kit.

Ms Holland admits that the root cause wasn’t being addressed:

  We didn’t even know what the cause was… the call from the resident would purely say ‘I’ve got mould’, and our response was ‘we’ll clean it’. So we went from that to saying we will find out what’s causing the mould and resolve that, rather than just cleaning it and waiting for the resident to tell us when it comes back.

For residents as well, the change has been transformative. Debra McCorkle had experienced severe damp in her L&Q flat in Walthamstow, east London for most of the four years she lived there. “The walls were always cold and the room felt cold,” she says. “There wasn’t visual mould but everything felt damp.”

Ms McCorkle was given a number of simple but useful tips to help keep the damp at bay, such as opening windows for a short time every day and moving furniture from the walls. She was also given a smart sensor to track the impact. Since then, the damp has improved and her energy bills have become cheaper.

But it was the care with which she was treated by the HealthyHomes experts that made the most impact on Ms McCorkle, who has back pain issues and needed help to rearrange her furniture. “The fact that he was willing to physically move stuff around for me, I almost was crying because he did so much. I’m not used to someone being that nice and helpful, and how caring he was – I wasn’t expecting that.”

That level of service has hugely increased the trust between L&Q and the residents who have benefited from the HealthyHomes service. With relationships between tenants and their landlords in the social housing sector not always as good as they can be, that shift is invaluable.

Which leaves both residents and landlords unsure what to do if and when mould returns.

That’s why HealthyHomes Empower is the most important step. It gives residents a clear management plan to deal with ongoing damp and mould problems themselves, without having to defer to the experts.

This speaks to two of the most important themes at the heart of the whole initiative: empowerment and engagement. ZapCarbon are already rolling out the ‘HealthyHomes’ service nationally, partnering with a number of larger landlords outside the capital. But Mr Holroyd says that it is the methodology itself that could be transformative.

Our vision for this is that it becomes part of best practice nationally. Landlords are struggling with their budgets and the idea behind this is to provide a comprehensive solution to Awaab’s Law, with an end-to-end service that enables landlords to be fully autonomous if they wish. In the long run, they can deliver the full solution themselves, with ZapCarbon on hand to support and provide backup as needed. In this way, we’ll be achieving long-lived positive outcomes for everyone.