London tenants are suffering from the capital having the worst problem of damp in social housing in England, according to a Commons inquiry.
The report by the Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee also highlighted overcrowding in social homes in the city.
“The highest levels of damp in the social rented sector were present in London boroughs,” it stressed.
Florence Eshalomi, the committee’s chair and MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, urged councils and housing associations in London to “get better at fixing homes”.
She also stressed that they need to deal with “complaints promptly”.
She told The Standard: “People deserve warm, safe and decent places to live.
“It’s very concerning that social homes in London are often more likely to have a problem with damp.”
The higher levels of damp social homes in the capital are despite it having less wet weather than many other regions.
Landlords are now forced to investigate and fix damp and mould in social housing in England within strict timescales under a new law introduced following the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak.
He died from mould exposure at his Rochdale home in 2020.
Rules on addressing other hazards, such as structural, excess cold and heat, as well as electrical issues, are being phased in.
Ms Eshalomi stressed: “Social landlords across the capital need to get better at fixing homes and addressing complaints promptly.
“While Awaab’s law can help tenants with their landlords, we need the Government to come forward in its Long-term Housing Strategy with plans to invest in fixing existing stock and to build the social homes of the future.”
In the private rented sector, damp was most prevalent in Yorkshire and the Humber and the West Midlands, as well as throughout the East Midlands and parts of the South East, according to the Commons inquiry.
Shocking reports have also emerged of housing conditions in London including one family where sewage was coming up into the bath.
A crackdown on rogue landlords renting out homes with mould and other dangers is being expanded across the capital.
Ian McDermott, chief executive of the Peabody housing association, emphasised to the committee the “enormous strain” on the social housing sector, with hundreds of thousands of people waiting to get a home in the capital.
Mr McDermott, who also chairs the G15 group of London’s leading housing associations, told the MPs that Peabody has a property in London built in the 1860s in which five people are living in one bedroom.
Given the age of the property the rooms are small, he explained, so insulating the home internally is not possible because it would make the rooms “even smaller”, but they are unable to insulate the property externally either because it is protected.
He said that ideally the family would be rehoused in a more suitably sized property, but the length of the local waiting list means that it would be “many years, if not decades,” before one becomes available.
In London, the building of new affordable homes has almost ground to a halt in some boroughs.
A study earlier this year also warned that the capital is facing its worst housebuilding crisis since the Second World War.
The committee’s report stressed that raising the standard of social homes in England had stalled.
Most social homes provide tenants with “warm, safe and decent places” to live, it concluded.
But too many people living in social housing still “suffer from appalling housing conditions and do not have their complaints treated seriously”.
The MPs s emphasised that the minimum standard of what is considered a decent home has not changed in 20 years.
“It is not acceptable that just under 430,000 social homes still fail to meet even this basic standard,” they added.
