Transcript – Resident engagement: Addressing damp and mould

Transcript for ‘Resident engagement: Addressing damp and mould’.

Catherine Little: Welcome to CT’s honest conversations podcast. I’m Catherine Little, a director at Campbell Tickell, and I’m here today with Jon Slade, also a director. Here at Campbell Tickell, we both work around the sector, Jon, around resident engagement and actually lead on our work on asset management. We thought it would be an idea to come together and just have a chat about damp and mould in particular and the work we see social landlords to engage residents around that conversation. So welcome, good to see you here. 

Damp and mould really is on the radar for housing associations and council landlords as we go around the country, isn’t it? I wonder what would you see as the role of resident engagement in improving the approach to damp and mould? 

Jon Slade: Yeah, good question. I think it’s important to think of resident engagement in two ways. Firstly, resident engagement in terms of how an organisation enables their diverse customers to access services. So that’s about understanding how different groups of customers want to interact with you, which channels they want to use and how you maximise the impact that an interaction can have in any given channel. And it’s really important to look out for obstacles and consider whether those obstacles could be overcome. I think it’s also important to think about finding your silence, the favourite phrase of the Ombudsman at the moment, identifying which customers you are not hearing from and considering whether there are patterns within those individual stories. For example, are customers for whom English is not their first language overrepresented? 

And then secondly, this is the more traditional sense of engaging with residents, which is about services, what they want and how an organisation is meeting those needs. Resolving damp and mould typically relies on a mix of property-related work and behaviour change, and you can be working with engaged residents to understand their perspective on how best to enable behaviour change amongst residents. 

Catherine Little: Behaviour change is a phrase that’s often used in relation to damp, mould and condensation, isn’t it? I wonder. We sometimes talked about flipping that on its head and thinking about what behaviour change might an organisation need to make in order to improve its management of damp, mould and condensation. 

Jon Slade: Yeah, it’s another good question, Catherine. From my perspective, I think the paradigm has changed. I think that housing organisations used to presume that if a household didn’t seek help, they were probably all right. The Our Bishop Ishaq case changed that. Now housing organisations want to know that every household is OK. We’ve just been working with the National Federation of Housing Associations on a report about making every contact with residents count. There’s good insight in that report into a range of methods to answer that new question about how do we know that everybody is alright? But it’s also important to recognise that the new question requires changes in outlook and culture within housing organisations. Good news from my perspective is that we found lots of positive evidence of those changes going on in our work on the report. So it’ll be worth listeners if they’re interested, having a look at that report when it comes out. 

Catherine Little: And there’s a whole host of tech out there to support better understanding of homes, isn’t there? In relation to damp and mould, I wonder what role can those tools play? Are there any risks involved in using them? 

Jon Slade:  So there’s a bunch of new tech that can definitely play a part. If we think about things like smart meters and smart sensors, those devices can definitely shed more light, both for customers and for organisations. I think one aspect to be aware of there is that it’s important to always be transparent about the data that’s being captured and the uses that it’s being put to. I think we owe that to the residents to provide that level of transparency, but it’s also important to acknowledge that a crucial component in dealing with damp, mould and condensation is behaviour change for residents. In the bad old days, sometimes that consisted of little more than a responsibility for a technical person to hand over a leaflet and then the job was done. I think a more informed way of looking at it would be to think about, first of all, the wider context within which damp, mould and condensation exist.  

For a household, it might be that they are overcrowded because an adult child can’t afford to move out. It might be because an overcrowded family can’t get a transfer to a more suitably sized property. There may be economic factors in play, a lack of employment opportunities that lead to fuel poverty. So all of these issues can contribute to a way of living in a property that in itself makes damp, mould and condensation more likely. In the bad old days, perhaps we almost blamed residents for that being the case. I think today what we need to do is acknowledge that wider context and work with residents, stay in touch with them, be supportive and understanding of their situation, and continue to make efforts to try and find ways into their situation such that they are able to better manage what’s going on in their property in relation to damp, mould and condensation. 

Catherine Little: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So using some of the technology that’s available, but not seeing it as a whole solution essentially? 

Jon Slade: Absolutely, yeah. 

Catherine Little: OK. And are there links here with the wider work that’s needed on the journey to Net Zero? 

Jon Slade: Well, there are. I think for me the key point here is about dismantling silos. It’s important that work on damp, mould and condensation doesn’t exist in a silo or a vacuum, separate from other work that might be being done to that or other properties. For example, you would very much hope that your planned works were considering issues such as Carbon Zero and Net Zero, and were thinking about how that building archetype would best be equipped for the next 50 years of its life and that those considerations would reduce the potential for damp, mould and condensation in that building archetype. What you don’t want is to be spending huge amounts of money on damp, mould and condensation mitigation works without any join to wider programmes of other works to that and other properties. So it’s really about making sure that the work is joined up to what’s going on across the asset management team as a whole. 

Catherine Little: Thanks, Jon. This is really interesting. And I think I’m hearing messages about kind of joining up across the organisation, really using data intelligently, whatever the source, but ultimately thinking in a different way. It’s about culture change and making sure that residents in their homes as a place to live are at the centre of your thinking, as well as tackling the technical issue of damp and mould. 

Jon Slade: Yes. And I would just add to that, it’s really important to be asking yourself as an organisation whether your culture is supportive of the direction in which you’re moving, or whether perhaps there may be aspects of your culture which still reflect that more technical approach to damp, mould and condensation, but doesn’t recognise the importance of making services accessible to everybody. So whether English is your first language or not, whether there are any cultural barriers to interacting with a largely male technical team, you have to be asking yourself whether those factors exist and how you’re overcoming them. Because as a housing organisation, it’s your job to know that everyone is OK, not simply to be dealing with those people who approach you to tell you that they’re not OK. 

 Zina Smith: Many thanks for listening to this podcast episode. Catherine and Jon emphasised the importance of taking a holistic approach to resident engagement, combining technology, behaviour change, and organisational culture to effectively manage housing issues like damp and mould. 

If you’d like to find out more about how Campbell Tickell can support our resident engagement strategy and asset management services, please website: campbelltickell.com/ourservices 

And please feel free to send us your feedback on this podcast! We’d love to hear from you on what you have found useful and interesting, and what else you’d like to hear from us on. 

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To discuss the issues raised in this episode, contact Catherine Little on Catherine.Little@campbelltickell.com or contact Jon Slade at Jon.Slade@campbelltickell.com