Fatal flaws

For some reason, the condensing boiler in the flat below hers happened be emitting high levels of the noxious gas, perhaps following a random knock. Her downstairs neighbours in the newly built block happened to run the boiler at an unusually high temperature, which happened to exacerbate the carbon monoxide leaks. A faulty flue further impeded the appliance’s safe running.

Then, in a further random turn, the 27-year-old just happened to sleep in her daughter’s empty bedroom one night. That room happened to include a window vent through which fumes from the flat below entered the room and fatally poisoned its inhabitant.

Scandalously, though, Ms Ighodalo’s fate is not reserved for those who fall prey to extreme misfortune.

As Dr Roy Newberry Palmer, the coroner who ran the inquest into her death, points out, many millions of homes are fitted with condensing boilers of the type which killed Ms Ighodalo.

Yet there is apparently no requirement for such appliances to undergo a single safety test once they have left the factory gates. Which is why ministers and the head of the Health and Safety Executive should respond urgently to Dr Newberry Palmer’s letter urging them to introduce tougher safety measures to prevent more deaths.

But there is a simpler solution. Thanks to Inside Housing’s Safe as Houses campaign the government has already changed UK law to require that carbon monoxide alarms are hardwired into all new homes which contain solid-fuel-burning gas appliances.

It must now extend this requirement, contained in Part J of the Building Regulations, to all types of gas appliances, as this magazine has always argued should happen.

In the meantime, landlords have it in their gift to prevent further tragedies by installing alarms with immediate effect. L&Q now fits alarms in all its new developments. Had it done so earlier, Ms Ighodalo might have been counting herself lucky.