Awaab Ishak: Home where toddler died is still riddled with mould more than two years later

Published

2 years ago

March 28, 2023

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The home where Awaab Ishak died still has problems with damp and mould more than two years after his “tragic and preventable” death.

A new report into Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) paints a “disturbing picture” of life on the estate where the toddler died after being exposed to extensive mould in his family’s flat.

RBH has confirmed to Sky News that the flat – which is now home to a new tenant – still contains black mould, although it is not as prevalent as when the Ishak family lived there.

The latest investigation into the tragedy found a culture where staff dismissed residents out of hand, believing they knew better.

RBH employees held “prejudices and lazy assumptions” about asylum seekers and refugees, that left them struggling with inadequate – and sometimes dangerous – housing, according to the Housing Ombudsman.

One staff member said when residents complained about the mould and living conditions, a manager told her because “most of the residents are refugees” they “were lucky to have [a] roof over head”.

‘Disgusting’ attitudes on display

Richard Blakeway, from the Housing Ombudsman, said the attitudes on display were “frankly, disgusting”.

While RBH did conduct an independent review following Awaab’s death, this was done entirely by telephone because of the pandemic. It failed to identify the extensive damp and mould – present in 80% of homes – that a subsequent survey in 2022 found throughout the estate.

Of the 380 properties surveyed, 12 were branded as Category 1 hazards.

The ombudsman said it is inevitable there are more residents out there living with “serious mould” and RBH has been given a three-month deadline to make progress on the failures outlined in the report.

Yvonne Arrowsmith, RBH Interim Chief Executive, said the organisation was not going to argue with the contents of the report.

Her predecessor, Gareth Swarbrick, was sacked in the wake of Awaab’s death while RBH was stripped of new funding and downgraded to “non-compliant” by the regulator for failing to act.

“We are really sorry to any residents that have not been treated with respect, that haven’t felt their voice has been heard. Because that’s just not acceptable,” she told Sky News.

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The report, she said, was “painful” and “uncomfortable” to read, but was also fairly “balanced”, with the ombudsman recognising where it was attempting to improve.

RBH has visited 5,000 properties since December to check for problems and is doing a 100% stock condition survey this year.

But Ms Arrowsmith denied the organisation is structurally racist, and said: “It was poor customer service”.

Awaab’s family wrongly blamed

When mould issues were first reported by Awaab’s family, RBH focussed entirely on how his parents were using the home.

Previously, the inquest heard evidence from staff that the family had a “lifestyle of boiling food in pans on the stove” and assumptions had been made, on the basis of seeing a bucket, that the family practiced ritual bathing.

This assumption was based entirely on a member of staff’s “previous, irrelevant” interactions with other people in the same block of flats.

Mr Blakeway said the initial response by RBH to Awaab’s death was “inadequate” and “simply wrong”.

“There were misplaced views and derogatory comments about the family and the circumstances in which the family found themselves,” he said.

The ombudsman also found RBH lost most of its email data in 2020. This destroyed an audit trail for cases wrongly handled by email in the years previously, including that of Awaab’s family.

‘They blamed us for breathing too much’

The dismissive language was not restricted to just Awaab’s family either.

One tenant, who lives in a three-bedroom house managed by RBH, told Sky News most of the rooms are “useless” because of damp and mould.

Richard Kalanyos has a small child around Awaab’s age and first complained to his landlord two years ago about the problem.

“The bed has mould everywhere, the walls, around the window area too,” he said.

“Night or day, there’s always moisture. We heat the rooms a lot, losing money by heating, but it’s just too much.”

He said RBH sent someone to investigate, but they blamed him for having “too many people” in the property.

“They blamed us for breathing too much,” he said.

He continued: “But every day we leave the windows open.

“I was so angry, but what can I do? It was hopeless to try and get help.”

‘RBH threw out my parent’s ashes’

Residents were often accused of using mould issues to try and get a bigger property, the ombudsman report found.

In one 2021 case, an RBH staff member admitted there was a “small amount of black mould in the property” but blamed it on the people living there.

In an internal email, sent after the inspection, they wrote: “There are three children and two adults living in the two bed home. So, that is the cause of the problem. Their frustration is that they want a bigger home and cant [sic] get one.”

And problems went even beyond RBH’s inability to deal with mould.

In another instance, a resident was given the wrong end date for her tenancy. RBH realised this but did not contact her to correct it. The woman had partially moved out and when she returned to finish getting her belongings she found the landlord had changed the locks.

They had also thrown away her belongings – including her parent’s ashes.

Mr Blakeway said the ombudsman is seeing “repeated failure” from a number of landlords, but the report should be a wake-up call, both for RBH and the housing sector as a whole.

Housing Secretary Michael Gove said: “This investigation lays bare the appalling failures by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing that led to Awaab Ishak’s tragic death. It is shocking that such inadequate standards and repeated tenant blaming were long-standing issues.

“This is absolutely unacceptable and I will continue to block government funding from RBH for new homes until it can prove each of its residents has a safe and secure home. New leadership at RBH is an important first step, but there is still much more to do.

“Our Social Housing Bill will hold failing landlords to account and in Awaab’s name, we are introducing a law so that hazards like damp and mould will have to be fixed within set time frames.”

UK

Five people guilty in case of mistaken-identity double murder of teenage boys

Published

17 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Five people guilty in case of mistaken-identity double murder of teenage boys

Four teenagers and a 45-year-old man have been found guilty of murdering two boys, aged 15 and 16, who were attacked with machetes in a case of mistaken identity.

The convictions follow a five-week trial at Bristol Crown Court.

The jury heard how Max Dixon and Mason Rist were killed in a case of mistaken identity on 27 January, after being wrongly identified as being responsible for a house attack in the Hartcliffe area of the city earlier that evening.

Antony Snook, 45, Riley Tolliver, 18, and three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 were all on trial each charged with two counts of murder.

As the jury foreman returned the guilty verdicts, none of the defendants showed any reaction from the dock, as they sat impassively and stared straight ahead.

The fatal stabbings in Knowle West lasted just 33 seconds – with both boys suffering what the court heard were “unsurvivable” injuries and “instant severe blood loss”.

Both died in hospital in the early hours of 28 January.

Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins, the case’s senior investigating officer from Avon and Somerset Police, told Sky News that Max and Mason had nothing to do with the house attack.

“Those boys were not known to their attackers, they were best friends, two beautiful children just going about their lives and attacked for no reason whatsoever,” he said.

Much of the prosecution’s case was based on CCTV and doorbell videos, including a camera on Mason’s own house which captured footage of the knife attack against him.

The pair were seen leaving Mason’s home at around 11.15pm and were going for a pizza.

Prosecutor Ray Tully KC told the jury that the boys were set upon by the group who had been travelling in Snook’s Audi Q2.

He said the group were “out for revenge”, “acting as a pack” to hunt down those responsible and “tooled up” with fearsome weapons.

After the attackers fled, Max and Mason were left bleeding in the street.

The investigation involved more than 230 police officers and staff – with thousands of pieces of evidence analysed.

Hundreds mourned victims at school

The teenage victims were in year 11 together at the Oasis Academy John Williams secondary school and were preparing to sit their GCSEs this summer.

The school’s headteacher Victoria Boomer-Clark told Sky News that everyone rallied to support fellow pupils and staff.

She said: “After the boys were tragically murdered, for us first and foremost we were thinking about the families and how they were coping with the absolute tragedy and shock of that.

“I can remember trying to prepare for that Monday morning and my memories now are how exceptionally strong our young people are and how we have a real sense of community.

“Unbeknownst to us the young people had arranged to hold a vigil on the playground during breaktime on that first Monday. We had hundreds of young people and staff coming together in silence.”

Ms Boomer-Clark said the boys would have attended school prom this summer.

“We had a wall that was lit up in red for Mason and Liverpool football club and a wall in blue for Park Knowle Football Club,” she said. “The year group came together and supported each other through it.”

Detective had never seen ‘horrific’ weapons before

The murders came before a new law was introduced banning ownership of zombie-style knives and machetes.

Detective Superintendent Gary Haskins said: “The weapons used in the attack on Mason and Max were simply horrific.

“I’ve been a detective for many, many years and I’ve had the misfortune of investigating some serious offences.

“In all my service I’ve not seen a weapon like the one we saw used on those two boys.

“There is no place for a weapon of that type in society for any reason whatsoever.”

The detective praised the boy’s families, who attended court throughout the trial.

He added: “I’m humbled by the families involved in this investigation. They’ve been at court every day, they’ve seen things at court that no parent should ever be exposed to. They saw the attacks on their children, but they maintain their dignity, their courage and their love for their family.

“How can you replace what they’ve lost? They’ve lost two beautiful sons, and I can only hope that the verdicts will bring some form of closure. It will never close completely.”

Snook will be sentenced on 19 November at Bristol Crown Court.

The other four defendants will be sentenced on 16 December following the preparation of pre-sentence reports.

Police are continuing to investigate the Hartcliffe house attack and search for those responsible.

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

20 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

20 hours ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.