UK HOUSING

A damning report – and another death

MAY 31, 2025

How SHAC is working to deliver the social action and national tenants and residents union that the Housing Ombudsman’s report suggests is essential.

A single day in May has again thrown social housing into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, with a damning report on rising disrepairs complaints and the death of a baby in a decaying home owned by a housing association. 

On Thursday, the Housing Ombudsman published a new report which investigated “hundreds of cases and over 3,000 responses to a call for evidence, including MPs and councillors” and which found “some stark data, including a 474% increase in complaints concerning substandard living conditions between 2019-20 to 2024-25.” It highlighted that around two-thirds of these cases stemmed “from poor practice.”

On the same day, the immense tragedy of baby Akram Mohammed’s death in a home unfit for human habitation also hit the headlines. Akram’s untimely death was reported by ITV‘s Daniel Hewitt:

“The family of a 15-week-old baby who died after living in a damp, mould-ridden housing association flat say they believe the conditions contributed to his death… The walls and ceiling [of his home] were covered in black mould and the property smelled of damp.”

The family had reported damp, mould and other disrepairs multiple times to their landlord, Notting Hill Genesis, a housing association established in the wake of Peter Rachman’s brutal slum landlordism of the 1960s which has now turned itself into a provider of slum housing. 

Akram’s father said: “We complained, and complained, but nothing happened… We were crying out for help, but nobody hears.” The day after Akram’s death, the family were moved into suitable accommodation; an option that had been available all along.

The Ombudsman’s press release on its report headlined with a warning that “simmering anger” amongst tenants and residents risks “social disquiet”and calls for the creation of a national resident body to create a resident voice. 

But tenants and residents do not need a voice, they need a body with the power to hold their landlords and politicians to account. This cannot happen without collective organisation. Thus, both social action and the formation of a national tenants and residents union are central to SHAC’s work. 

SHAC continues to support hundreds of groups who are collectively withholding payment over disrepairs or extortionate service charges. This is the most powerful strategy currently available to tenants and residents.

Most importantly, SHAC has long recognised that increasing levels of slum landlordism, just one face of the UK’s housing crisis, will not change until there is a powerful national body that can hold landlords to account. That’s why it launched a project to develop a national tenants and residents union (NTRU) earlier this year.

Unlike the Ombudsman, SHAC does not believe that an NTRU should be funded or controlled by government. This has been tried several times previously, and each iteration has failed to deliver sufficient improvement. 

While such bodies have carried out some useful work, they are immediately recognised by tenants and residents as a device to provide a pressure valve for their anger while carefully maintaining the status quo. None have sought to fundamentally change the balance of power between tenants and landlords.

Instead, SHAC plans an NTRU which is largely self-funding and supported by the trade union movement. It is also firmly committed to ensuring that decision-making structures mirror trade unions’ self-determination and democracy. 

Suzanne Muna, SHAC Secretary and co-founder said: “Government points to the work of housing watchdogs as the best way of regulating landlord behaviour and driving improvement, but time and again, statistics show that housing conditions and the treatment of tenants and residents are sharply deteriorating. The medicine’s not working, and we have to search for a more effective alternative. Tenants and residents have given up waiting for government to ride to the rescue, and are getting organised so that they can create their own solution.”

The NTRU project has a growing list of supporters. It is currently sponsored by 11 housing campaign groups, and 46 local tenants and residents associations.

SHAC and the Unite Housing Workers Branch will be protesting against Notting Hill Genesis’s widespread slum living and poor working conditions. The protest will be held at 4pm, Friday 6th June, at Notting Hill Genesis, Bruce Kenrick House, 2 Killick Street, London N1 9FL.

The  Social Housing Acton Campaign is a campaign group linking tenants, renters, shared owners, and leaseholders living in both social and private housing, campaigning to improve the conditions of homes and neighbourhoods, and to reduce the commercialisation of public homes. www.shaction.org

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Image: https://www.cc4c.imperial.nhs.uk/our-experience/blog/damp-and-mould-advice Creator: Sébastian Dahl | Credit: © Sébastian Dahl (www.sebastiandahl.com) Copyright: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA