Devi Sridhar makes a fair point – the state of much of our housing has worrying implications for public health (Run-down rental homes are putting children in hospital: this is an urgent public health issue, 14 November).
Yet there is already a system in place for environmental health officers (EHOs) from local councils to deal with damp and cold homes. There is no need for new or additional regulatory systems – as the government keeps suggesting, so as to make it look like it is doing something. What is needed is for the existing system to be properly funded and for local authorities to deploy more EHOs to deal with housing. What we are seeing is the effects of 13 years of austerity. It cannot go on if we are to keep people out of hospital.
Agreed, the data included in guidance for EHOs in assessing risks using the housing health and safety rating system (HHSRS) is more than 20 years old, and needs updating (which has not been done in the government’s current review of the HHSRS) so that is still valid. It is also an argument for EHOs and the health and medical professions to work closely together to update housing and health data. But the powers are there, even to step in and carry out remedial work immediately when there is an imminent and serious threat to health.
So, there is no need for an independent regulator – it would only further confuse an already confusing situation. We can have all the regulations you like, but if there are not enough people to enforce them, there is little hope of improving conditions.
Dr Stephen Battersby
Vice-president, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health
• The scale, impact and cost to the NHS of damp and mould in housing are well known. While the problem is compounded by a lack of preventive action by underfunded local authorities, there remains a more fundamental issue of the poor recognition by the health service of housing-related health problems, and a lack of responsibility in the housing sector for the health of tenants and owners.
The Black Country Integrated Care System provides a model of what can be achieved from a health perspective, matched by the work of the Walsall Housing Group in tackling the health inequalities of tenants, and creating between them a shared and common sense of healthier housing.
Dr Richard Turkington
Coordinator, the Healthier Housing Partnership
• Poor housing is linked to poor health (The Guardian view on renting in Britain: the housing crisis is also a health crisis, 14 November). Plus ça change. I listened to a Blackpool GP over 10 years ago describing how she had noticed that as the winter went on, the number of prescriptions to elderly people for sleeping pills was going up. She presumably then had the time to look into it and discovered that elderly people were going to bed at 7pm because it was too cold in their house.
The continuous debate about the NHS is always about the supply side – getting more doctors and more beds. But a significant part of the crisis is on the demand side, and the socioeconomic and environmental conditions in which people live are a huge part of that. The old cliche that its actually a National Sickness Service still prevails. We are making people sick on a massive scale. Shortsighted and literally stupid.
Neil Blackshaw
Alnwick, Northumberland
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