Sheffield houses: 27-fold increase in council house damp and mould repair requests 'due to better reporting'
Sheffield City Council has explained the reason for a 27-fold increase in damp and mould repair requests from tenants.
New figures show a rise in complaints about council houses from 264 in 2022, to 7,262 in 2024 - a 2,650 per cent increase.
A city council spokesperson insisted there had not been a significant increase in repair requests.
Damp and mould complaints used to be logged under different workstreams on the repairs system, such as painting.
In 2022, the authority had improved how it logged and managed requests, resulting in the apparent rise, the council explained.
In total, the authority received 8,879 requests to fix damp and mould between 2022 and 2024. And the average time to complete repairs was 75 days, in 2024.
The figures were in a Freedom of Information request from housing disrepair law firm Liberay Legal.
There are more than 38,000 council houses in Sheffield.
A city council spokesperson said the service had been further improved in 2024 by the creation of a ‘dedicated damp and mould business unit’.
“This proactive approach has contributed to what looks like an increase in reported damp repairs, when really it is a more accurate logging of reported damp repairs.”
Rick Law, housing disrepair specialist lawyer and managing director of Liberay Legal, which helps tenants across the UK ‘seek justice for substandard living conditions’, said: “The majority of Britain’s council housing was built between the end of World War II and the late 1970’s, making most of these homes between 45 and 80 years old.
“That’s left many councils, like Sheffield, which still manages its own housing stock, dealing with a rapidly aging portfolio of buildings and the associated issues that will naturally crop up with older properties.
“This, combined with decades of underfunding and lack of Government investment in local councils, has created a perfect storm of issues, at the centre of which are the tenants forced to live in potentially dangerous conditions.”
In 2022, Becky Cooke and husband Stefen were moved out of a bungalow in Chapeltown so the property could be painted and replastered due to mould.
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