Awaab Ishak: Home where toddler died is still riddled with mould more than two years later
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”.
Awaab Ishak’s home
‘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.
Two-year-old Awaab Ishak who died in December 2020.
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”.
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Is Awaab’s death a defining moment for the housing sector?
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.
Awaab Ishak’s home
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.
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‘Significant failings’ at RBH
What is Awaab’s law?
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.
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Awaab ‘paid price for corporate neglect’
‘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.
Richard Kalanyos
“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.”
Richard Kalanyos’s home is still covered in damp and mould
‘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
No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she ‘is going nowhere’ after tearful appearance in Commons
Rachel Reeves has not offered her resignation and is “going nowhere”, Downing Street has said, following her tearful appearance in the House of Commons.
A Number 10 spokesperson said the chancellor had the “full backing” of Sir Keir Starmer, despite Ms Reeves looking visibly upset during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Politics latest: ‘A moment of intense peril’ for PM
A spokesperson for the chancellor later clarified that Ms Reeves had been affected by a “personal matter” and would be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.
Politics latest: Reeves looks visibly upset in Commons
UK government bond prices fell by the most since October 2022, and the pound tumbled after Ms Reeves’s Commons appearance, while the yield on the 10-year government bond, or gilt, rose as much as 22 basis points at one point to around 4.68%.
Downing Street’s insistence came despite Sir Keir refusing to guarantee that Ms Reeves would stay as chancellor until the next election following the fallout from the government’s recent welfare U-turn.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the chancellor the “human shield” for the prime minister’s “incompetence” just hours after he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn over his controversial welfare bill.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms Badenoch said: “This man has forgotten that his welfare bill was there to plug a black hole created by the chancellor. Instead they’re creating new ones.”
Turning to the chancellor, the Tory leader added: “[She] is pointing at me – she looks absolutely miserable.
“Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence. In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?”
Not fully answering the question, the prime minister replied: “[Ms Badenoch] certainly won’t.
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Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’
“I have to say, I’m always cheered up when she asks me questions or responds to a statement because she always makes a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are.”
Mrs Badenoch interjected: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 in a tense vote on Tuesday evening.
A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.
After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.
They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Ms Badenoch said the climbdown was proof that Sir Keir was “too weak to get anything done”.
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Ms Reeves has also borne a lot of the criticism over the handling of the vote, with some MPs believing that her strict approach to fiscal rules has meant she has approached the ballooning welfare bill from the standpoint of trying to make savings, rather than getting people into work.
Experts have now warned that the welfare U-turn, on top of reversing the cut to winter fuel, means that tax rises in the autumn are more likely – with Ms Reeves now needing to find £5bn to make up for the policy U-turns.
Asked by Ms Badenoch whether he could rule out further tax rises – something Labour promised it would not do on working people in its manifesto – Sir Keir said: “She knows that no prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the despatch box and writes budgets in the future.
“But she talks about growth, for 14 years we had stagnation, and that is what caused the problem.”
Prosecutors are considering whether to bring further criminal charges against Lucy Letby over the deaths of babies at two hospitals where she worked
The Crown Prosecution Service said it had received “a full file of evidence from Cheshire Constabulary asking us to consider further allegations in relation to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital”.
“We will now carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought,” it added.
“As always, we will make that decision independently, based on the evidence and in line with our legal test.”
Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital and is currently serving 15 whole-life orders.
Letby worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital
She is understood to have carried out two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where she trained as a student, between October and December 2012, and January and February 2015.
Police said in December that Letby was interviewed in prison as part of an investigation into more baby deaths and non-fatal collapses.
A Cheshire Constabulary spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Cheshire Constabulary has submitted a full file of evidence to the CPS for charging advice regarding the ongoing investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as part of Operation Hummingbird.”
Detectives previously said the investigation was looking into the full period of time that Letby worked as a nurse, covering the period from 2012 to 2016 and including a review of 4,000 admissions of babies.
Letby’s lawyer Mark McDonald said: “The evidence of the innocence of Lucy Letby is overwhelming,” adding: “We will cross every bridge when we get to it but if Lucy is charged I know we have a whole army of internationally renowned medical experts who will totally undermine the prosecution’s unfounded allegations.”
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Three managers at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
On Tuesday, it was confirmed that three managers at the Countess of Chester hospital had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in a separate investigation.
Read more from Sky News:
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Police said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the hospital between 2015 and 2016, have all been bailed pending further inquiries.
There is also an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the hospital, which began in October 2023.
A public inquiry has also been examining the hospital’s response to concerns raised about Letby before her arrest.
In May, it was announced the inquiry’s final report into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes will now be published early next year.
Earlier this year, Letby’s lawyers called for the suspension of the inquiry, claiming there was “overwhelming and compelling evidence” that her convictions were unsafe.
In February, an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists told reporters that poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths.
Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hopes her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
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