Awaab’s Law Workstream Meeting 13-11-2025

AWAAB'S LAW WORKSTREAM MEETING 13-11-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON …other people that have got an interest in the new legislation that’s come out. And what I’m doing is bringing together some people that i’ve met over the last couple of years who have also got an interest in it as well. So the principle is that we can share some experiences and also then use this to identify ways that we may be able to tackle what I think is a significant challenge, in particular for social landlords. And obviously their residents, they’re the most important people to look at from this perspective.

So that’s the reason for bringing everybody together. Alex and I have been talking about this for the last few weeks. And I think most client organisations are looking at this very actively and have been doing for probably the last 18 months or so. And what I’m trying to do here is see if we can bring together the best thinking and then we can share better ways of doing things. I think the other thing that we’ve learned through the whole BIM4Housing, BIM In Asset Management and also the Golden Thread work is that if we can get more standardisation in terms of processes and data sets etc, then people stand a much better chance of complying. In particular supply chain members.

So one of the things I would like to do, I don’t know if we’ve got anybody on here today that’s a contractor who would actually be asked to do the work. But if you know of somebody, Vic for example from Wythenshawe, if you’ve got contractors that you would be using to carry out this work it would be helpful if we could start to bring those into the discussion as well.

If you know of somebody that’s a contractor who is competent and able to do the work, in particular the mould work, if you could put their name in the company name in the chat we can invite them. So, is it worth people going around the table just giving a one minute explanation as to what you do and also what your interest is in this.

STEPHEN WESTLEY I’m from Iris IoT, we make sensors to monitor everything, from predictive maintenance to oil pipelines, chicken sheds, we monitor everything. And we started looking at Awaab’s Law about 2 1/2 years ago as a business opportunity. So knowing nothing about mould 2 years ago we went in pretty blind and spent 2 years talking to housing associations, doing a lot of shows and events. Mould specialists, expert witnesses, all of these kind of people involved.

And realised quite quickly that mould is a massive issue for everybody involved. We do know from Awaab’s Law that it does kill people and there are more cases to come through, we’ll see that in the next 6 months, of housing associations, local authorities, either going through the courts or getting some substantial fines. But what you find is there is a lot of misinformation. We spoke to a lot of specialists, and it’s not for me to say but yeah, there is a lot of bad information about mould. And everyone has got an opinion around mould, it does kill people, it’s very hazardous and there are different ways of looking how to rectify the problem.

Previously before the law come in there was a big focus on the tenants’ behaviour, how they lived their lifestyles. But that’s changing dramatically on how landlords are now having to engage with the tenants because there’s some substantial fines hanging over their heads if they don’t comply.

VICTORIA FINN We’ve been having a look at it over the last couple of years since Awaab’s event happened. And we’re looking at our day-to-day surveyors and how we can get a team together to specifically look at these areas, which we’ve been doing. I’m from a surveying background and did used to do damp and mould and structural surveys quite some time ago, so I’ve got an interest in it anyway. And now as I’m a building safety manager it obviously comes under the Building Safety Act to some degree as well.

Because obviously severe damp and mould issues can cause a lot of structural problems as well. So, we’re making sure that we’re linking up across the board here with our surveying teams, our repairs teams and the building safety teams. So I think from my perspective it’s just really important we link it up like we’ve said with building safety and Grenfell. People are working in isolation, so we’ve got to make sure that we work together on these things as well.

GEORGE STEVENSON Vic is from Wythenshawe, she’s a very active member of our BIM4Housing and BIM In Asset Management group. And she’s been using 360 photography for what they do and I’d like to suggest that that has got a role to play in this as well, but that’s my particular interest.

DAN SIMCOCK I’m a graduate building surveyor at Winchester City Council. We’re dealing with the housing stock and obviously Awaab’s Law might have a huge impact on how we go about our responsive repairs and it turn planned maintenance.

CONNOR STEVENSON I’m also one of the building surveyors for Wheatley Housing Association up in Scotland. Whereas we don’t have Awaab’s Law directly apply to Scotland, the Scottish government is taking it seriously and putting it into their own building standards. Obviously it’s a huge thing, so I’d like to see everybody else’s thoughts and feelings on it. In our previous r0le we had a few ideas of how we might tackle things and look at things.

KATHRYN SCOTT I’m from IoT solutions group, so much like Stephen we provide monitoring sensors for a wide variety of things, damp and mould being absolutely the key focus for us in light of Awaab’s Law and the legislation that that brings.

ANDY CUMBERPATCH It’s more just to find out more about it. We work in social housing. i don’t think it’s going to impact us currently, but know in the future Awaab’s Law with the rolling out of the other bits that come with it.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, actually Elspeth can probably give us a bit of a steer on that because she told me last week that it’s not just damp and mould, it’s also the fire and electrical safety as well.

ANDY CUMBERPATCH Yeah, that’s correct, going forward that’s what is going to come in. I’m just trying to get onboard now to glean the information to see how it will impact us at SCS going forward.

NICK DAVIES I head up the commercial team of IT solutions that Kat just mentioned a moment ago. I’m in a fortunate position, I’ve head up the commercial teams at two different IoT providers, not only here but also Switchy, So, over the last 5 or 6 years i’ve had a really great experience of working with different housing providers across the UK. That’s England, Wales and Scotland and working with partnerships, whether it’s the likes of Total mobile all the way through to main contractors as well.

To really get a grip and understand the challenges that damp and mould bring and the causality of damp and mould, not just the compliance of Awaab’s Law. But the interesting thing about Awaab’s Law, all it really does actually is it cements the response times, but it does a little bit more than that. It obviously puts a different onus and responsibility on the landlords to actually understand a little bit more around causality. And also ensuring that any interventions, any fixes, validating that they’ve worked.

So, it’s kind of triangulating how we can use technology to do that at scale, drive those efficiencies and really validate the impact ultimately of what it will have on your residents. And I think that’s often overlooked. Yes, there is a cost to the asset but there is an impact of the asset on the resident and a corresponding impact of the resident on the asset itself. And it’s how do we kind of help break that cycle and understand really what’s going on.

AARON HASTINGS I do apex consulting so I work with portfolio managers working with their automation systems, space cooling and heating, process cooling and heating those kind of things.

DAN O’GORMAN I’m from GS1 Ireland, obviously very interested in this because mould is not just confined to the Uk, tit’s a global phenomenon. What I’m interested in is how we can actually prevent this from happening in the first place and ensure that the inspections that were carried out during the construction and operations of these buildings are compliant using the GS1 standards, the tags at that location. And then finally to ensure that the materials used are compliant with the specification going forward. Because I assume out of this will be coming avoidance strategy rather than a rehabilitation strategy across the board.

JUSTIN GILLARD I’m here as a BIM consultant, but I usually work with asset owners. My interest in this subject is alongside George in many ways, to facilitate these processes where required on the design and fit outside of things is where I tend to operate.

JAMES KING I’m a knowledge development lawyer at Devonshire Solicitors. My role is to stay on top of all of the new developing stuff and do internal training for Devonshires and also external for clients as well. I suppose my primary interest in joining this group was to see how it’s being put into practice and to do things like maintenance contracts and how it’s been drafted to take into account. Obviously there’s the short timelines, but how is the risk apportioned?

Especially when things like the person that…the maintenance contract isn’t doing the triaging of the calls, so how are people affectively taking into account things like 24-hour timelines and then putting it into their contracts?

ELSPETH GRANT I’m founding director of Triple A solutions. We initially started by looking at Part M in the crazy, hazy days when Part M access into buildings via disabled and vulnerable people came in. In 2007 I was a director of an RMO and the Fire Safety Order suddenly landed in our email boxes. Took legal advice, the fact that it was a personal responsibility did not go down well with the other directors of the RMO.

Since 2009 to date I’ve been involved in developing either instructor led training strategies for residential estate managers for evacuation PEEPs. And since 2019 moved all of our role-based training, over 20 hours of IFE accredited training, onto e-learning. And currently work with organisations to make sure that they have suitable and sufficient training. And we’ve just updated all of our courses with Awaab’s Law. It’s very easy to forget it covers fire and electrical hazards as emergency hazards which are enforced now.

TAYLOR HAMMOND I’ve founded something called the National Building Register just last year, but after decades of angst. It’s a digital repository for the Golden Thread. In it’s sort of early sense, but I’m hoping it will be somewhere that property owners will want to keep their property records indefinitely. But that’s only part of what I do, I’m also a retrofit coordinator, a project manager in construction and a principal designer for building regulations as my day jobs.

So, I see at the coalface things that are going on that shouldn’t be going on, defects that we uncover and highlight and have to deal with. So really to try and pull all of this together I’m about due diligence and due process and making sure that when work is carried out it is done according to the design and specification. And that the products are correct, they’ve got the correct certification and keep everything as it should be.

GEORGE STEVENSON What you’ve done there is prompted one of the main reasons I see this as being so important as far as the Golden Thread is concerned. And that is that what we’ve learned over the last 4 or 5 years on working with it is there are so many different threads, all of which are important. But if they are treated in isolation with each other, then we don’t achieve the overall objective. So from a fire safety point of view, for example, making sure that all of the elements that go to make up a compartment wall, they all need to perform not just the fire doors or the penetration seals.

All of them have got to perform. And then if they don’t perform we’ve then got to make sure that also the smoke control system works and also the alarm system etc. Now, what’s interesting for me with in particular the damp and mould side of things is that it’s complicated. There can be many different causes and reasons that’s happening, both in terms of elements within the building that aren’t working properly because they’ve either not been designed properly, as you’re saying Taylor. But also they’ve not been implemented properly. Or that something has happened to damage them to stop them from operating.

And therefore I think that the process of sorting the problem out, rather than who’s responsible which is the worry I’ve got at the moment, everybody is going to be maybe turning to James and his colleagues at Devonshires to say who can we sue. The point is what we need to do is have something where we can have a process in place where we can obviate the problem and make sure that it can actually be address. Because at the end of the day that’s what the objective of the thing surely is, to make sure that we can identify what the fault is and also the core information, rather than just having a sticking plaster on it. Alex, can I ask you to reprise what you’ve done before?

ALEX OLDMAN I’m an asset management sales specialist at Totalmobile. I’ve been working in social housing asset management for the last 20 or so years, I’ve previously spent a lot of time with Civica. So, in terms of what we’re trying to provide at Total is a solution, it’s a data repository for people to hold their property asset records in the system. And to be able to provide a automated process that can take data from, for example, automated alerts like IoTSG. Nick and Kat on the call here can push alerts into our system which generates a task or activity in the system which can then be allocated to an appropriately competent operative to go out and perform that investigation.

Going back to James’ previous question about when the SLAs actually start. It’s at that initial report that the first SLA measure will be kicking in. And so we can then follow the progress of the investigation, the categorisation of the problem, all the way through to followup remediation works and track those through contractors and delivery of those works. But then also reporting to the resident, according to the service levels that have been provided. So this is something our customers are implementing now and have implemented and are operating with now. So this is an established simple process.

I think what we need to work towards next is the levels where you can look at prediction and track trends that are emerging. So where this is going to be really helpful in the application of information technology into this is going to be where we can start to predict where we know the problems are going to be arising. So, already it must be in place that we’ve got these complaint handling reports are being brought into the system, or initial reports in the process. But if you’ve deployed sensors into properties where there might be households at risk.

So if you’ve identified amongst your residents those that might be at risk from damp and mould. Those would be typically people with poorly health conditions, pulmonary disease and those sorts of things, they are going to be more at risk of this. So you’ve got to watch those households much more carefully, so it would be appropriate to deploy sensors into those. It’s also possible that you can do a higher cross level portfolio analysis and identify assets or trends that are happening in your reports that are coming in based on the archetypes of properties.

So there might be certain types of properties or areas of geography, you might have certain streets that have been built that are actually more susceptible to these damp reports or damp risk within the system. So you can then identify from that households and the property types that you might want to target and provide an enhanced service to those to try and preempt some of the matters. I think George, we previously have spoken about and example of one of your customers who had identified that when you’ve got an initial problem reported damp and mould in a property in a block of flats, for example.

They identified that it was potentially to do with rainwater not draining properly, or it could have been the soil stack. But anyway, there was water moving through the building when it should’t have been on the wall on the outside. So then it was appropriate to look at the levels underneath and determine on the floor below, is there also going to be a damp problem here, an as yet unreported damp problem. It’s just a smarter way of looking at things. So going back to the role of the building safety manager in this case, that’s obviously not going to cover the whole stock because building safety managers are not appointed for every home, but only for the larger schemes.

But a building safety manager should have or would typically have really good insight into the building itself, the structural makeup and operation of that. So that can be a very valuable part of the process, it’s part of the whole what we’re describing here is the bigger building safety scheme.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s very helpful, Alex. I’ll just probably declare my interest as well. As Active Plan, rather than BIM4Housing or BIM In Asset Management, both of which are voluntary roles on my part. Active Plan is a BIM application, but not BIM in the way that most people would think of it. It's an information management ecosystem that can connect lots of things together. Now, what I’m interested in is seeing how we can contribute to the work that Alex is providing and lots of other software vendors are providing in this area. Because I don’t think anybody has got anything like the solution.

The other thing I would say is that as far as the example that Alex just gave there. it becomes very complex for the client organisation to actually find the information that they need. For example, the drainage information may have been provided in some documents that are in some O&M somewhere. It may have been modelled, but even if it is modelled it’s probably modelled as a work package and it doesn’t relate to other information as well. So it actually does need to be glued together.

So part of what I think we can bring to the table is glueing together a lot of disparate information that would otherwise be missed. The other aspect of this is looking at what the other financial drivers as far as social landlords are concerned. Because the challenge is that everybody has been investing or throwing money at trying to solve problems with fire over the last many years. And I can imagine for social landlords the coffers are quite depleted from that perspective.

Now if we can do things where information that is being gathered for fire safety can also be used by people that are looking at things for electrical safety and also for damp and mould, we’ve got the same base information model that then can be repurposed in many different ways. And again, I think most people recognise that I’m a big believer in 360 photographs to be able to supplement any information that’a either historic information or BIM models. So the 360 photograph, however it’s taken, whether it’s taken just using a simple camera or by one of the big reality capture vendors, that’s enormously useful information.

And I’d like to use this community to understand how we can glue together all of these great bits of technology and also expertise to say how can we come up with some reusable solutions. So that’s where I’m coming from. Alex, if we were to try and draw this together into something where we can provide a way of articulating to landlords and also service providers, maintenance companies, what’s actually needed, how do you think we might be able to look at what information we need? Because at the end of the day this is BIM In Asset Management as a group. And that doesn’t mean 3D, it means information. So one of the questions I’ve got is what information do we actually need to help people solve problems.

ALEX OLDMAN I’m going to share my screen. I’m going to put a link that people can click on into that chat. It’s a link to the MHCLG’s document on data standards and requirements. This webpage from earlier on this year was talking about evolving data standards for Awaab’s Law, in this particular case in social housing. So obviously Awaab’s Law is targeted at social housing but all housing providers, private rented sector is equally applicable I’d have thought. But there’s this discussion about the data model in terms of what information you might require.

Now, what we haven’t done and I think would be useful to this forum and group would be to take a mapping of this and see how this might map across the building information that we’ve got already, particularly for this property map. This is actually suggesting that we need information from tenant’s properties appointments regarding the investigations and the work orders. And there’s even a suggested entity relationship diagram for the data types that might be included, without getting too geeky and technical on the information provider side of things. And you’ll find that there’s links off to the HACT publication on this as well.

HACT are starting to work with the government on what the data standard, the data model might be, but I also think we need to think about how this might work in a BIM context. I’m always slightly conflicted thinking about BIM because my role and my approach is more strategic portfolio thinking. Whereas BIM tends to be specific projects, often a single building. It might be a large scheme, like a hospital for example, that might include multiple buildings, but typically a single campus. Whereas I think we need to perhaps think about what the data that we would want to connect across an entire portfolio.

And the last point I want to make on that is often the level of data that’s collected, BIM information that we might record, is held in much lower detail about residential assets that we’ve got. If you’ve got a 3-bedroom house that is being rented from a social landlord you might only have information about the make and model of the boiler, for example, and associated information. So in terms of the data model we need to hold information on the residents, so there needs to be some sort of CRM piece to actually implement this properly. We need to be able to capture information into the system.

And then we need to identify that mould is in place and then take appropriate action. When the action’s work has been completed we need to make sure that we can certify or satisfy ourselves that the work has been completed to the required standards. And if you’re making upgrades or changes you need to understand how that might have affected the safety management system for that building going forward. So the classic is you put a ventilation, you fit an extractor fan but has that compromised some of the fire safety or compartmentation in that building now?

Have you got a knock-on effect as a consequence of that? Of that action you’ve taken of mitigating the risk here and actually introduced another risk in another area. So again, this needs to be part of a whole building safety system and all of that needs to be considered as part of the context. So, I don’t know if anybody wants to think about or offer or volunteer to work on a mapping where we can look at the data standards that perhaps HACT are working on. And look at an interpretation of that with a portfolio based BIM approach.

GEORGE STEVENSON Just on that, if you’re interested in that particular topic, either in contributing to it or learning what other experts are doing, just put data standards into the chat. I’m going to open it up now to anybody that wants to contribute or has something to build upon what Alex has said there.

RICHARD FREER Is this a working group or a workstream?

GEORGE STEVENSON Workstream.

RICHARD FREER Right, what is the purpose of the workstream in one sentence?

GEORGE STEVENSON To come up with some repeatable standardised methods of addressing the challenge that social housing providers have got.

RICHARD FREER So it’s about methodologies rather than the data itself.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think it’s the outcomes which would be a combination of the process and the means of achieving the outcomes. I wouldn’t want this just to be talking about process. Part of what we’re thinking with this is perhaps we look at what types of innovation are happening in the industry to actually tackle it. Because we will have people that are coming up with some really, like Alex is already leading on with Totalmobile. And with the greatest respect, some of your competitors like NEC are probably doing a similar type of thing.

What I think would be great is if we could have examples of that. And maybe for teams to come together, we could have an Awaab’s Law challenge. In other words, asking people to form teams, maybe a social housing provider or maybe one or two, getting together with maybe a couple of technology companies. Somebody like Iris or IoT Solutions or indeed bringing in Aaron’s technology as well. A lot of that is around ventilation rather than just sensors.

RICHARD FREER So would this be for existing people who are working together? Or they would come together for the purpose?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think both. I suspect that clients are probably bringing together people to address particular problem, but there may well be an opportunity to bring together people that could also contribute to that as well.

RICHARD FREER So would there be prizes?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think so, I think we can do that. I don’t know.

RICHARD FREER It sounds like quite a good idea, but it’s nice to have prizes.

GEORGE STEVENSON Does anybody like the idea of having a challenge? Some sort of competition on that. If you’re interested in forming a group put ‘challenge’ into the chat. I’m really looking probably for Alex to help coordinate some of this.

CONNOR STEVENSON Mine poses a question that might help start some conversations. Firstly, I’ve been trying to find solutions for Awaab’s Law since I was in my last job, the introduction of Awaab’s Law at my last company was what started the business. Internally at Wheatley with me moving into the department that I’m in now we are at the start of building a full portfolio of 2D twins. So that fits into your portfolio of information. It's one for the IoT guys.

What we found was particularly a hosing association of the scale of Wheatley where there’s 65,000 houses and that’s growing every year, plus another 30-odd that are factored, there’s 90,000 houses. What we found with the IoT sensors is everything was red. Absolutely everything was red, there was not form of exceptions reporting. So all you had was somebody was logging in to the dashboard and saying oh, the humidity is high everywhere, damp and mould risk here, dust mite risk here, everything is red.

And there was no way of saying that this property matches with this construction type, which means this is your priority. And I think one of the problems with putting things into archetypes is that unless you’re including construction type. Because just in the Southside of Glasgow I’ve got 15 different construction types in tenement buildings that are all the same archetype. So it’s trying to match up what the sensors are actually telling without it just saying every single building has got mould in it or every single building is at mould risk.

Because I mean with the cost of living everything is at mould risk. So just maybe the IoT guys can jump in and say how do we make it easier for the RSLs and the social landlords to actually use the information that’s being provided by the IoTs?

NICK DAVIES That’s really valuable feedback and I’ll be really candid, some of us are better at this than others. First and foremost, if the IoT sensors, if all they do is tell you about absolute moisture and humidity then it’s no surprise you’re going to have red across the board. What you need to make sure you do is you’re working with the right kind of partners that have the right accuracy of the algorithms and those algorithms are tested. Because some of the benefit and some of the value of IoT sensor technology is to drive efficiency. Well, it’s not going to be efficient if everywhere is littered with damp and mould.

The second thing is even where those do it well and have a higher accuracy in the algorithms, the important piece here is the integration of the insights. Now, what IoT providers will provide you are actionable insights. You kind of need to do something with it, but we only give you part of the picture. And that’s where the partnership, that’s where the integration, working with others out there. And making sure that insight goes into your system, so engagement in your systems of record. You called a couple of those out already.

OK great, give me this picture back, what’s going on in this property? But what’s the archetype? OK, there you go, let’s enhance that and push it into your asset management systems so you get the picture about the archetype. But interestingly one of the things you’ve missed out is triangulating the resident. Now you may have a whole street full fo exactly the same archetypes and you have all sorts of different risk metrics that are coming out of those same archetypes. Because you’ve got different residents that are living in those archetypes.

Some residents may well be in real extreme fuel poverty and are unable to heat their home, that’s going to have an impact. Some residents might be a single person, some might be a family of 5. These are completely different environments that are happening in the same place. And some of those residents might also be vulnerable residents, they may be elderly, they may be children under 5 which is quite important when it comes to Awaab’s Law. You’re going to have that information in your housing management system.

So, this isn’t just about IoT sensors and their accuracy and understanding what’s going on environmentally. It's understanding the building, it’s also understanding the people in there and how these things all join up. And that’s where we have to work in partnership, work collectively.

CONNOR STEVENSON Yeah absolutely, I do actually have it in my notes about people affected. In the last place that I worked we wanted to sort of create or investigate in partnership with Napier University, but that’s now gone, is looking at people as a dimension of BIM. Because all of the BIM stuff at the moment, it’s all about the building really. And whether it’s a hospital or a 2-bed flat, people are the ones that actually use this building, so what is their impact on the building?

You’re right, I completely agree, as people from RSLs on this call know, you’ve got some 2-beds that have got 4 people in them. They need additional ventilation or some kind of thing. And then you’ve got other 2-beds where there is one person there, they don’t need it. Or you’ve got one person that has 2-hour long steaming hot showers…keep the windows open all day. But the people dimension of BIM would be really good. We never got to a place where we could publish anything that had any substance to it.

NICK DAVIES I had a really interesting conversation at a similar event to this last week with the housing ombudsman who actually heads up the disputes team for England. And more often than not he’s looking at the reports have come from surveyors and it’s ended up in a dispute. And the problem and the challenge is as professional as people are trying to be, often it’s opinion. And one of the big things Awaab’s Law talks about is it’s fact based, it’s got to be data driven rather than opinion.

So what’s the real about what’s going on in the property? Because too often it’s lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle. Well, guess what? We all live in a home, we all take showers, we all dry our washing in it. We live in the Northern hemisphere, it rains 90% of the time in autumn and winter, so where are we going to dry our clothes? That’s the reality of life.

CONNOR STEVENSON I said that in one of the calls last week, the building standards in Scotland actually state that you should have capacity to dry your clothes internally, and that seems to go missing.

NICK DAVIES Yeah, and it’s absolutely right to do that. But what’s really going on in that property to cause it to have a high risk of damp which may lead to a high risk of mould occurring. And what’s the data set…If you’ve already gone out and done some work, you’ve done some interventions, has that worked in the real world? Not in a model, but in the real world with the residents that you’ve got. And where’s your evidence pack that sits behind? Yes or no, and if the answer is no, why not? What’s the evidence that sits behind it?

And I think you’ve got to have this blend of technology, people, yes systems and processes, but then bringing those different silos of data together to formulate that picture so you can make a difference to the life of the resident.

GEORGE STEVENSON That seems to me to be another area that we could have a separate conversation on, Nick. Which is as Connor was saying there, the brining together of these different bits. I’m not quite sure how to articulate that, but if that’s something that would interest you…maybe that’s Golden Thread. If you’re interested in tat and maybe setting up a conversation around that put ‘Golden Thread’ in the chat and we can invite you to it.

I had a call last night from a client and I have to attend a workshop with them, they’ve just won a new contract and they need some help. So I’m going to have to dip out at 12pm. So I’m just making in advance my apologies for the fact, but I know that Richard and Alex can carry it forward.

DAN SIMCOCK We’ve been told you can’t sort of consider the person’s impact, the human impact on mould, and you’ve got to think of it as more the building rather than just the person having a shower because obviously they have to. However, what we do get is we install extraction fans that are set with a humidistat so that we’re all working fine. But even when we don’t even have a switch, some tenants are taking the fuses out so that they’re not working, because they don’t want the noise and this sort of thing.

So where would we stand especially with Internet of Things and all of that, getting all this data when potentially the end user is turning it off? Clearly the data will be wrong.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, the interesting thing with that Dan is that when we were doing the fire work years ago I remember somebody from L&Q was talking about the condoms. And I thought where do condoms fit in fire safety? And apparently people were putting condoms over smoke alarms so that they could smoke, and then leaving the condoms on.

NICK DAVIES It’s a really good point and it breaks down into a couple of different areas and we see it all of the time. The first piece is why is the resident turning it off? And it’s normally for one of two reasons we find. The first one is there is a perception that it’s costing them money. It’s electrics, it’s burning and they’re probably in fuel poverty, that’s one education piece. The second piece is sometimes the fans are blooming noisy and actually quite disruptive.

Now, if that’s the case then the argument would be was it the right fan to begin with, if it’s that disruptive to the noise environment of the resident. So sometimes you need to scratch beneath the surface of it. But in a purely legal protection perspective, if the IoT sensors are evidencing that you’ve done everything you can as a landlord to mitigate the challenges and issues in that property. And the data, not opinion, but the data is showing that the resident has turned off those measures then you’ve got your data pack.

You are protected and you can show that, you can mitigate any future disrepair claim or any referral to the ombudsman and you’re protected. It doesn’t protect your asset from degrading from future damp and mould, but nevertheless you’ve got the data set to put your position across and then in becomes an education piece.

AARON HASTINGS What Nick said is right on the money. IoT sensors are perceived as a negative because it can be disabled, but it’s actually a positive because you can tell that it was disabled. Also I’ve worked with systems in places where the automation systems will give you 3,000-5,000 alarms a day. And what you’re seeing is an indication of the people side of the IoT ecosystem, that it’s not being implemented properly, that the people behind it are not doing their job properly.

So you’ve got an indication if you have alarms everywhere, back to the original comment, it’s because it hasn’t been done properly and it’s not being managed properly by your vendor. So you test drive your vendor successfully and you’ve seen a demonstration of their lack of capability and it’s time to move on to another vendor, very likely.

GEORGE STEVENSON One of the interesting things as far as the sensors are concerned is that, and I’m learning about this. I’ve met Aaron virtually on a Whatsapp group that iv’e been invited to join called Start With Smart. One of the fascinating things for me is that there are so many different technologies now, with different providers that are doing things.

And I don’t think any one IoT company is likely, even if they can do everything it’s unlikely that a particular landlord will have everything from one organisation. Because in many cases it will have been put in maybe my even a specialist subcontractor who’s monitoring things. So what’s absolutely critical is this ability to glue things together. It’s part of what you do, isn’t it Aaron? To provide that type of integration.

I'm suggesting that we have a follow up meeting in a couple of weeks time, which is Thursday the 27th. Now, we had another workshop like this on fire strategies on Monday and we’ve got a follow up on that one on the 24th. Now the reason I’m mentioning that is that it has significance as far as building the right data set to manage this as well. Because to achieve that, to do the fire strategies, they’ve got to have some sort of spatial model that identifies what spaces are being used for and where they are. What the relationship of those spaces are, what those measures are in place. And particularly as Elspeth told me that fire safety and electrical safety are part of this as well, it even more feeds into it.

And what’s interesting on that is that the fire strategy people, the fire engineers, they’re doing the fire side of things looking at escape strategies. But we also had in that group the people that are responsible for security. And what they’re doing is stopping people from getting into the building. And what they’re finding is the people that are putting the measures in to stop people getting in to the building, maglocks and things like that, are actually compromising the escape strategy. And it’s only when you see those things together, then you identify what the conflicts are. And ventilation is another part of that, by the way, because the ventilation in that particular case is smoke control.

So being able to make sure that the right smoke control measures are in place. We know that ventilation is an important part of the damp and mould thing, it’s another part of the jigsaw that we can perhaps join up. I’m not saying you should necessarily get into the fire strategy group, you’re welcome to join it if you wish. But if you want to know what was discussed there if you put ‘fire strategy’ in the chat we can send you a link to the recording. And I think, Richard, we’re also doing a high level AI summary of that, are we?

RICHARD FREER I think rather than a link to the recording we do an AI generated 15 minute podcast which would tell you all you need to know from that.

ALEX OLDMAN Assuming that we’ve exhausted everybody’s additional points that everybody wants to make, let’s talk about next steps. I see that we’ve got some responses to the challenge and the data standards side of things. So we’ll take those away and have a discussion about how we can coordinate those. I’ll be in touch with those people who’ve indicated they want to be involved in those to work out what we need to be doing.

I’m assuming that BIM4Housing will be sending out the meeting invites for the 27th. I apologies in advance that I probably won’t be able to make that meeting, I’ve got a day event that I’m also running that day. I can play catchup and provide some prompts beforehand. Does anybody have anything else that they want to pick up on or discuss? Or Richard, have you got any more coordinating comments that you want to make?

RICHARD FREER Just quickly on the challenge, we’re looking at having prizes for that. We’ve had suggestions so far of a 360 camera plus tuition, so you can make the most out of it. And various software vendors giving free licences for different bits of their software. if anybody has got any ideas as to what sort of prizes would be good and realistic that would be good to hear. Also if you can put in the chat which you would prefer.

ALEX OLDMAN Thanks very much for your attention and input, I think this has been a particularly engaging session today. And hopefully next time when we get back together we’ll be able to summarise and report some progress.

JUSTIN GILLARD Just a minor revelation in this meeting really. I think it was you that said people as a dimension of BIM.

ALEX OLDMAN It was Connor.

JUSTIN GILLARD I find that fascinating because I come from an asset management background and everything is focused on the asset. And with regards to Awaab’s Law and the occupant, of course people aren’t assets as such but they do affect this subject. I’ve gone through, in the UK we’ve got this NBS national building reference here, and 8D BIM is considered to be by some adding health & safety information. And I guess that’s the nearest at the moment we can come to that in the UK, the human aspect of buildings and information about assets and, of course, people in them. It’s fascinating as a concept.

ALEX OLDMAN There’s many dimensions to that. Perhaps we can explore that as well, but in terms of expanding out on that data set if you want to be part of that challenge, Justin, that would be great. And the data standards as well, that’s definitely something we can explore. My brain is firing off thinking competencies as well as risks that householders might have, so operator competencies. Contact information is really important to drive these processes, we’ve got to keep people informed. We’ve got to get information from them, feedback etc, so yeah, a very valid point.

CHAT

Mark (Unverified)…. Hi - Have no audio or video - but Hi everyone - I'm Mark and CCO at Tector. We are leading the way with moisture management solutions with our AI Sensors and Data insights platform - we're having more and more discussions with social housing/associations here in the UK in terms of preventative moisture management, and in so doing, also obviously mould prevention.

stephen westley iris-iot.com (Unverified)…. Good insight and 100% agree Alex, prediction is the way forward, we do this for machine maintenance and even in health so why not for mould risk. The issue is normally why are we paying now for something that is not happened yet! This attitude is changing but slowly.

Alex Oldman (Unverified)…. https://mhclgdigital.blog.gov.uk/2025/08/20/delivering-a-data-standard-to-support-awaabs-law-in-social-housing/

Victoria Finn (External)… sorry being called away, will catch up on recording

Dan O'Gorman (External)…. Folks apologies I have to go to the next meeting. excellent content and I want to stay on this project

Elspeth (External)…. A really intersting meeting - I would love to be involved more as I come from a system integration background. However, I can't commit at the moment as I am already working all the hours but I'd like to stay with the group. Cheers, Elspeth

Preetam Deshmukh (External)… See u all next week at London built expo. I'm also available for in person meeting on 17-18 at ur office. If it happens to be in London Please feel free to reach out on +44 7460660346

Structured Academic Summary: Awaab's Law Workshop (13-11-2025)

1. Overview

The workshop brought together professionals from social housing, IoT, surveying, asset management, legal, and digital systems to discuss the implications of Awaab’s Law, focusing on damp and mould, emergency hazards, data standards, Golden Thread requirements, and cross‑disciplinary collaboration.

2. Key Themes

- Widespread concern over misinformation about damp and mould and the need for accurate, data-driven approaches.

- Shift from blaming tenant behaviour to landlord responsibility under Awaab’s Law.

- Strong interest in integrating IoT sensors, predictive analytics, and automated workflows to meet short statutory response times.

- Emphasis on the need for joined‑up processes across surveying, repairs, asset management, and building safety.

- Importance of construction quality, due diligence, and Golden Thread information to prevent failures.

- Discussion on human factors: resident vulnerability, behaviour, and how “people as a dimension of BIM” should be considered.

- Recognition that damp and mould cannot be tackled in isolation; it links to fire safety, electrical safety, ventilation, and overall building performance.

3. Notable Contributions

- Multiple organisations presented their use of sensors for early detection and risk mitigation.

- Legal perspectives highlighted the challenge of incorporating 24‑hour and 7‑day SLA requirements into contracts and triage systems.

- Several participants stressed that Awaab’s Law reinforces the need for evidence-based, verifiable interventions rather than professional opinion alone.

- Interest in mapping emerging government data standards (HACT, MHCLG) to portfolio‑level BIM and Golden Thread models.

- Discussion of a potential “Awaab’s Law Challenge” to encourage collaboration across technology vendors and landlords.

Key Risks / Key Insights & Action Points