Rochdale housing chief sacked after Awaab Ishak’s death from mould exposure

News21.11.2211.15 AM by Ella Jessel

The chief executive of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) has been sacked by the association’s board after a coroner found that two-year-old Awaab Ishak died from prolonged exposure to mould.

Gareth Swarbrick has been sacked by RBH’s board

Sharelines

The chief executive of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing has been sacked by the association’s board after a coroner found that two-year-old Awaab Ishak died from prolonged exposure to mould #UKhousing

Gareth Swarbrick, who last week issued a defiant statement saying he would not resign, has now been removed from his post with “immediate effect”.

In a statement issued on Saturday, RBH said: “We will now work to appoint an external interim chief executive. Our original instincts were for Gareth to stay on to see the organisation through this difficult period and to make the necessary changes, but we all recognise that this is no longer tenable.”

Mr Swarbrick was fired four days after a coroner found that Awaab had died from a respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to black mould in the one-bed flat he lived in with parents, Faisal Abdullah and Aisha Amin.

His father, Mr Abdullah, had repeatedly raised the issue with RBH, but no action was taken. Senior coroner Joanne Kearsley said that Awaab’s death should be a “defining moment” for the housing sector.

Since the coroner’s ruling, Mr Swarbrick has faced mounting pressure to resign from ministers, MPs and the toddler’s family. Last week, housing secretary Michael Gove said that he would be summoning the chief executive to explain his position and that it “beggars belief” he was still in the job.

Yet on Thursday, Mr Swarbrick was adamant he could remain. In a statement on Thursday, he said the “conversation around my position has begun to overshadow the most important part of all of this, which is that a family has lost their child”.

He confirmed that he would not be resigning and said the RBH board had given him “their full backing and trust to continue to oversee the improvements and changes needed” at the social landlord.

However by Saturday, as members of the public joined Awaab’s parents at a vigil in Rochdale, the board decided that Mr Swarbrick’s position had become untenable and said he would be “removed”.

RBH’s statement added: “The coroner noted that RBH had made changes as a result of the tragic death of Awaab. Under new leadership RBH will continue to embed these changes and continue to drive further improvements to our homes and to our communications with tenants.”

In the wake of the coroner’s verdict, Mr Gove has written to social housing providers warning them to “raise the bar dramatically” on the quality of social housing.

In his letter, Mr Gove said that the coroner’s report into Awaab’s death was a “litany of failure” and that he expects all providers to read it in full and “absorb its findings”.

On mould issues, he warned against hiding behind “legal processes”, adding: “Where people complain about damp and mould, you must listen, [and] where you find them, you must take action.”

Mr Gove has also written to the leader of every English council to warn them that a repeat of the two-year-old’s death could not be allowed to happen.

In this letter, Mr Gove called on local authorities to “do everything in your power to prioritise the improvement of housing conditions”.

The housing secretary asked councils to supply the department with an assessment of damp and mould issues affecting privately rented properties and an explanation of how it is being tackled.

RBH added: “We are committed to sharing what we have learnt about the impact to health of damp, condensation and mould with the social housing sector, and to supporting sector-wide changes. We will work with other agencies local and national and with central government in implementing the wider changes recommended to them by the coroner.

“As an organisation we are deeply sorry for the death of Awaab and devastated that it happened in one of our homes. We must ensure this can never happen again. His death needs to be a wake-up call for everyone in housing, social care and health.

“We support the coroner and Housing Ombudsman’s call for the government’s Decent Homes Standard to be strengthened to include damp and mould. There will be no further statement at this time.”