Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.
This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.
And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.
The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.
We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.
Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.
From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.
Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters
#70 - Rosie Wills: Housing's Hidden Battles and Data Driven Solutions to Damp and Mould
The curious mind can transform an industry—and that's exactly what Rosie Wills has accomplished at Mid Devon Housing. Her journey from accidental investigator to sector-recognized expert offers a masterclass in how systematic curiosity can revolutionize approaches to persistent housing problems.
Starting with a simple desire to reduce tenant wait times for technical inspections, Rosie uncovered that damp and mold constituted the largest category of these inspections. Rather than accepting conventional wisdom, she developed data-driven systems that transformed response times from six weeks to just two. But she didn't stop there—she kept pulling threads, analyzing patterns, and challenging assumptions about how housing providers should approach these issues.
What emerges in this conversation is a refreshingly honest look at housing maintenance that puts tenants at the center while embracing technological innovation. Rosie shares how environmental monitoring sensors revealed hidden patterns in homes, allowing for targeted interventions rather than generic advice. She explains the value of keeping cases open for 12-18 months through full seasonal cycles, prioritizing actual resolution over administrative neatness. Most importantly, she demonstrates how technical expertise and human connection must work in tandem—spending an hour with a tenant during inspection might seem inefficient initially, but pays dividends in long-term success.
As the sector prepares for the implementation of Awaab's Law following a tragic death from housing conditions, Rosie's perspective on balancing compliance with genuine care couldn't be more timely. Her willingness to share her journey openly has created ripples throughout the housing community, demonstrating that expertise often grows not from formal qualifications but from persistent curiosity and a willingness to learn publicly.
Whether you work in housing, property management, or simply care about improving living conditions, this episode offers invaluable insights on using data to solve complex problems while never losing sight of the humans at the heart of it all. Subscribe now and join our growing community of curious professionals dedicated to making built environments healthier for everyone.
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Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. We already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. I'm Simon Jones and coming up a conversation with Rosie Wills, technical Support and Repairs Manager at Mid Devon Housing. I'm a huge fan of Rosie's. She has been on a journey over the last few years through her role of trying to understand and improve outcomes for tenants in her part of the world on a subject I obviously care about ventilation, damp and mold in housing, but more than that, she has thrown open her journey, findings, successes and failures online in a way that has garnered her a lot of admiration in the community, including myself. She has been inquisitive, data orientated, systems thinking in her approach, networked and sought knowledge and, importantly, shared with the wider community this journey and kept people the tenants at the centre of her thinking. I have a huge amount of respect for her and couldn't wait to get her on the podcast to talk to me about the adventures of the curious in housing. We had a small technical issue during the recording with some online buzz in the audio and had to reset and change location. So if you're watching on video, that will explain the cut to a different background at some point. I really hope you enjoy this one. Please don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes and at air quality mattersnet.
Simon:This is a conversation with rosie wills. The main thrust of the conversation I thought would be interesting to have with you is I've kind of titled it Adventures of the Curious, in that I think what's been fascinating about your journey is as someone that is clearly very technically competent but you've been really. It seems like you've had this really open journey of discovery into the, into the sector, um, and I think that's a really good way marker for people that you you've you've become a kind of accidental expert in a way in this space. I think you've realized over the last few years that people have started looking to you for, for guidance and benchmarks of how to approach this stuff, um, so I think that journey is really interesting, just a just an interesting personal journey, but also an interesting one for other people in the sector to say like this isn't, this isn't the realm of damp and mold experts and air quality experts. This is a space that you can fall into and learn as you go and add value in that process. Do you know what I mean?
Rosie:yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Rosie:I think accidental is probably the perfect word to describe where my career has ended up.
Rosie:I wonder if it is quite nice and maybe inspiring for other people, because I think a lot of us you can end up a bit lost If you don't perhaps go to university, or you do go to university and you decide you don't want to pursue that. But I guess you'd look at it from that perspective that maybe you could never be an expert. But I think finding it more organically and just doing a job that you enjoy and then finding a niche and something that you feel inspired by or feel passionate about, and then roll with that, it's a really, really nice, organic way to you know, become interested and perhaps become an expert in something, um, which we've discussed this before. I always feel a little bit uncomfortable with how expert title, but I guess if you do something for long enough, um, and look as much into it as as I have and some of my colleagues have, maybe you just end up there, naturally yeah, I think you're right and expertise is a perspective thing.
Simon:You know, like I can't remember what the um there's a term for it, isn't it about? About expertise, uh, people that think they're experts. I'll think of it later on. But you know, I often said to people that started, uh, in one of my previous roles with me, that you'd be surprised how quickly you could become an expert in a space, because it depends on who you're talking to. But the vast majority of people know absolutely nothing about the subject matter that you're starting to dedicate some time to. So, very quickly you find yourself in a position where you are, to a degree, an expert to a large portion of the population and as you get more niche and more expertise in certain areas, obviously you become an expert to more and more people up the chain. You know it's a progression thing. So I think that's the fact and that's the fascinating thing about the built environment is it's environment, is it's one of these spaces where you can find yourself in some unlikely spots of interest, can't you?
Rosie:Yeah, definitely, and I think it's such a and there's probably lots of other areas where this happens, but I think in damp and mild, especially in social housing, but also in general building surveying it's. It just seems to be something that it draws people to and once you're into it, there's so many people that I speak about. And I've met someone recently who was almost asking for advice and I was saying, oh you're, this, is you're talking to the worst person to ask advice about this, because he said, oh my, you know, I've got a surveyor or a couple of surveyors that are getting really into it and they started exploring the monitoring. I'm trying to say to them you know, you need to switch off from this and you need to stop looking at this in the evenings and the weekends. But every time I speak to them, they go oh, I was in the bath last night and I thought this and just there's so many people that just do that and can't stop thinking about it. But you know, I think if it's your job and you enjoy it, then that's the perfect opportunity to to learn properly and make a difference.
Rosie:Um, and like, I couldn't say anything to this card because I thought, you know, that's exactly where I am, but you know, it is just how it is. I think, and it's it's really exciting to be part of that and and to be able to speak to other people who don't just do it as a nine to five, but kind of latched on to something, that everything you do and everything you discover and implement and test could make a massive difference, because it's something that affects us all and uh, yeah, I find that really exciting, but it is hard. I still would say it's important to find a work-life balance, um, but it's also really interesting and, you know, incredible to be part of something, part of the community that, um, is making some difference, because it's also really interesting and incredible to be part of something like community that is making some difference, because it's been an issue forever and it probably will be an issue forever, but it's nice to know that we're working to find some sort of balance, as our homes are adapting and we're creating new problems for ourselves.
Simon:Yeah, that's very true and it's one of the beauties of housing and the built environment and things like damp and mould is that they are complex and paying attention to the problem that they're having can be a win for somebody that's been struggling to get attention for the space that they live in. So at every level there's some satisfaction often that you can get from these roles and, as you've found, I suppose, over the last few years, there's always something else to learn. There's another perspective, another angle, new data set to look at.
Rosie:it's a rewarding space in that sense yeah, definitely, and it's just one of those things where it's it's not a one-size-fits-all, because every home is different and every person's different and there's similarities.
Rosie:And you know we're in the fortunate position in some ways that we've got, you know, we might own every single property on a street.
Rosie:So you know, in lots of ways they're identical but they're not really because everything might have been retrofitted in a slightly different way just because the just because of the way that our renewal programs work.
Rosie:And then every tenant, even if they're on the same income and have the same household size, they're still going to have different relationships with their home and with each other and with their money and their habits, and it makes it really challenging in lots of ways. But also you realize that you have to look at every home and every person as an individual and figure out the solution for them and for that as an individual, and figure out the solution for them and for that rather than you know. Obviously we should work to minimum benchmarks, minimum standards, but to fix the problem we've definitely got to go above those minimum standards and work out what people actually need and want, rather than just this should work in practice, because we all know that what works in practice, or what should work in practice, doesn't often work in real life no, true, that's because, unfortunately, we put people in buildings and, uh, our life would be a lot easier if we just built empty boxes.
Simon:Um, oh, yeah, for sure, but these homes are for people, unfortunately, and they, uh, they had a dynamic nature to the stuff that we do that wouldn't be there ordinarily. I think. Maybe for listeners that don't know you, rosie, maybe a quick kind of one-on-one and now 101 on how you found yourself here, like what was your kind of career track to finding yourself in houses, looking at them from a technical perspective and a problem solving perspective?
Rosie:How did you?
Simon:personally find yourself in this space.
Rosie:So definitely accidentally. It's probably worth going a bit further back, because the first time that I was working in homes wasn't from a maintenance perspective in any sense, it was. I spent eight years working in health and social care management community-based, so when I was working in people and social care management community-based, so when I was working in people's homes I was working focused on the people and not necessarily the actual housing itself. So there's very much crossover in our customer base, but it was generally people with social care needs or social support needs and it was quite a useful foundation to then move into social housing, because it was starting with the people focused and then moving into the building and then I went very building focused and then found this balance in between um, in terms of once I started working in social housing again, I didn't start working in the surveying area, so I came in as an office manager.
Rosie:um, so it was just about working with the team who do the programming of works and what happened? It was a couple of years after I started. It was just a really small problem that I'd identified and needed to resolve, and the problem was that our tenants were having to wait six weeks for technical inspections and it's too long. So to solve that problem, or to try and solve that problem and understand it, I was having a look through all of the data that we had on our technical inspections and decided to look at a rough breakdown of what type of inspections were we looking at. So it was categorized by damp and mold, cracks, external paths, plastering, and then what percentage of all of our inspections fitted into each group, and the biggest group was damp and mold. So then I took that group and said, right, okay, out of damp and mold, how many of these are structural issues? How many of them are condensation issues? How many of them are a combination of both? And the biggest wedge of that was condensation issues. So then I had a look at that wedge and said, well, how many of those are we returning to the same year or within the next 12 months? And then from there.
Rosie:I had a conversation with our technical inspector, had a look at the sort of works that we were doing, what did he do when he was there on site, and a lot of it. We realised that we could actually just ask the tenants directly as soon as they phoned, and we could skip the technical inspection because we know what we're going to say, we know what we're going to find and we could just go straight to the solution. So we would send an electrician to fix or fit a fan, or we would send someone to check the insulation above a problem area, and what happened was we were then able to reduce the time that our tenants waited for those sort of inspections from six weeks down to two weeks, which meant that when we did need to do an inspection, we were there quickly and we could still meet our target of getting the overall job done within 28 days, which was great. But I just couldn't let it go because I'd opened up this box of damp and mould and I thought that one part of the problem is fixed, but clearly not all of it is.
Rosie:So the process from there went to a bigger review of data and then break it all down and analyze it and figure out how to resolve another problem, and then open up another big data set and review it in a different way and then just like, close down into each of the different elements that came out of that and resolve another problem.
Rosie:But every time you resolve one problem, a little bit pings in the back of your head to go well, I've noticed another anomaly there, so I need to come back to that and that's how the process has gone, and it started maybe eight years ago and it's not really slowed down. And then now what we've got is environmental monitoring. So our data set is now massive and we've got a whole other load of data and we tend to go on a whole stock basis, narrow it down, then start looking at individual properties, then what we've learned there, spread it out and then reflect that across all properties, go smaller again and it just goes through that constant learning process and analysis of data so that everything that we're collecting, we're doing something with it and trying to learn from it and apply it on a bigger or smaller scale so in your dna?
Simon:are you a? Are you a systems thinker at heart? Do you think? Because, listening to you, I gotta say I mean you've come from the, the tenant perspective in your earlier part of your career tenant perspective in your earlier part of your career. But, very quickly, from how you describe unpacking this problem and diving into the data, because that's almost that's definitely been a trend, certainly on what you've publicly put out there which has been very valuable to the housing sector but I get a sense that you're very process orientated and very systems thinking orientated. And there's this, there's this hunger within you to to problem solve but to unpack and understand the data, the numbers, the efficiencies, the processes.
Rosie:That is that a fundamental driver for you, that part of the problem yeah, I would say that that's probably a fair reflection of where I am and how I work. Definitely, data driven I I kind of. I really like, where possible and I know it's not there's a lot of gray areas but where it's possible, I like things to have their place and I like to be able to put things into the boxes and say this is true, this is not true. I work a lot better with those kind of black and whites where possible, because too much ambiguity can just sometimes lead to complications. But equally, probably in the last two years maybe, I've then tried to open that up and be a bit broader in terms of recognizing the human side to what's behind all that data, in terms of what's driven it in the first place, what makes us behave in the way that we communicate factual things, because sometimes saying facts to people doesn't help and saying facts to people doesn't change why they did what they did, why they do what they do and why they will do what they're going to do.
Rosie:So it's kind of taken a similar sort of approach in terms of looking at larger sets of data and understanding by asking people what drove this, what, what actually happened? We've noticed something in your home. But what thought process? What thought process did you go through? Um? And then just researching a little bit more about what we can do and how we can tailor how we communicate and what makes people's behavior change in positive ways, which is where we've kind of come across the kind of nudge theory, and that's been really, really helpful.
Rosie:So it's kind of again expanding out into the very gray areas of human behavior but then bringing it back down to you know, we will try something in a different way. But rather than just say we think it would work to review it again using the data, to say we've tried a nudge approach in this particular communication piece, but we've validated it by seeing how much more or less successful it was than our previous communication attempts with the same group of people, um, so that's where we've tried to kind of find a happy marriage between the black and white of data and the gray of human behavior, to make a difference, where possible, in terms of what we're aiming to achieve, which is healthier homes, healthier residents and ultimately for the council, saving money and making sure that we're making best use of the resources that we've got and I think what's really interesting with what you've done and your approach has been that and you push on a lot of open doors with me.
Simon:I mean, I I'm big into systemizing a lot of this stuff because it helps you. There's this old saying in business about working on your business, not in your business, and understanding how to systemize these processes and understanding the structures and the patterns is really important to both improve the processes but also understand and evidence the effectiveness of the interventions, which is so important. And I think what's fascinating about your journey has been you've taken what's effectively been, I'm guessing, a fairly blank canvas with your housing organisation, and I think this will resonate with a lot of people. I think something like damp and mould has been an expertise thing. If there's no systems in place, somebody complains that there's damp and mould, you send a technical person of some description out to survey what the problem is and you take as read the report that comes back that this is the intervention that's likely to be needed and the problem is in theory solved and gets tick check job done and then it cycles back a year later, two years later, and it's a kind of a rinse and repeat cycle and you've kind of come in and gone, started to unpack that and it started with we need to get better at response times, things, and then you started breaking it down and breaking it down, and breaking it down and you've kind of gone down this rabbit hole of going right, how do I systemize this entire process?
Simon:How does data fit within this? How do I know that this is the right? Like you say, this is the problem. This isn't the problem. This is the right answer, the wrong answer.
Simon:You know that whole thing, um, and I remember in the early days you, you, you start, you did that with a flow chart. You had a great process map of how to tackle them, but so you could see that early thinking of the, the process you expected to get to a result, um, and then over time you've introduced data as well. So it's fascinating in that perspective, this trying to systemize it, and that's, I think, what's interesting for listeners and and others is that's a journey that so many people are going on at the moment, because there's this renewed interest, particularly in damp and mould with AWOBS law and the housing ombudsman and so on, that we've got to evidence our interventions and our resources that are going into solving this problem and without that structure it's very difficult to do that, because everybody's been trying to deal with damp and mould for years and probably been doing it poorly and just been spending money in this kind of cyclical process of patching things up and so on, um, that you need those systems and you need that data and you need that approach.
Rosie:So I think that's been really fascinating seeing the way and I will share links in the notes and stuff to some of your work but, um, I think it's been really interesting to see the evolution of that over the years yeah, and I think, um, the one of the main reasons for the success is probably the, the amount of flexibility and trust there's been within the organization I work for, um, there's lots, lots of people that I speak with that have some really great ideas, but I have to get it through boards or other groups, um, or there's the you know, the evidence-based ideas of what should or shouldn't happen, but it's that's balanced against kind of more of political risk than actual risk to people. So, and and I I think, unfortunately that's the way that some of the very well-intentioned changes, uh, that have come in um will push a lot of organizations, which is, we need things to look like they're great and we need our homes to look like they're healthy. Um, as opposed to, we need to make sure that they are healthy and that it's sustainable and long-term change. And what we've had at the moment is that we you know a few small examples we don't close off cases, damp and mould cases for normally at least 12 to 18 months after any intervention, because we know that anyone could do works in I don't know, maybe february, march and you wouldn't have any mold for the next six months, but you can type, you can sign that off and say well, we went back six weeks later, we did a check and there's no more mold growth. You could do a mold wash and don't do anything, but that wouldn't have got rid of the problem. So we don't come back and review it until after the first full winter period or we need to go through another two condensation seasons because it varies year to year anyway, depending what's going on outside.
Rosie:So it means our cases get left open for a really long time and it really doesn't look neat and there's lots of organizations that don't like that and even organizations potentially that are reviewing what we're doing and scoring us even organisations potentially that are reviewing what we're doing and scoring us. It's based on as long as we can justify and say this is why we do it and it's a better way to keep people safe. It's not neat and it looks like things are open for a long time, but our belief is that's just how it works and we could do it in a neater way. That makes other people happier, but it doesn't keep our tenants safer and it means that people can get lost in the middle of a political system. Really, and the same with our approach to mould treatment as well.
Rosie:Mould forming on surfaces is an indicator of something going wrong and we need to know when it's going wrong. And we also need tenants to know how to act immediately as soon as something is seen, rather than in some way that's being encouraged to be left because we say, if it gets to a certain amount, someone will come in and treat it for you. So it's then encouraging people to leave it till it gets to. If I leave it till it gets to two square meters, then landlords coming in, as opposed to we, will treat one speck of mould as seriously as a whole room full of mould, because it's all an indicator that something's gone wrong.
Rosie:But you know, as I said, we've just been really, really fortunate that, as long as I can provide the evidence and the data behind it, I've generally been backed up by the team. All my colleagues and also kind of line managers, our counsellors and members have been really supportive and also tenants that have been involved in feeding into those strategies have been great. But I think that is the key to doing the right thing and my belief has always been I'd rather get in trouble for doing the right thing then get a pat on the back for doing the wrong thing yeah, there's a couple of things I'd like to unpack in that, because there's a couple of things you've said are very meaningful there.
Simon:Um, but before I come back to that, um, this support that you've received with your housing organization, mid Devon Housing, is that something that was inherent within the housing organization or is that something you've had to work to build Because it sounds like it's very important? Is this something you've built over a period of time or do you think it just came naturally to that particular housing organization? An openness and a willingness to to put some trust in you and and try some interventions and take some risks?
Rosie:I do. You know, I'm not really sure because I guess I've never really seen the alternative of what would happen if I'd have done it differently, and to therefore be able to answer what made it like that. I think, um, I think part of it was almost accidental that by choosing to share what we've learned in the smaller part of our organization more widely, as in with the whole sector, it actually means there's more people within my own organization that know about that stuff. Um, because you can't, you wouldn't share that or I wouldn't, I wouldn't send it by email to a whole group of people within the organization because it would be a kind of overload. But the fact that it's out there, people can kind of cherry pick it and just see it in the background. All this is going on, um, so I think it's been an accidental byproduct of, uh, sharing it more widely means more people in my own organization know and trust that it's.
Rosie:It's quite validates almost, because if you see it be shared and then other people who are also, you know, well respected within the same sector or industry, go yeah, I approve of this, then it's easy to then go back within your own organization say I'm not just talking rubbish here, um yeah but also I think that if you make it really easy because we're all busy, um, and for our corporate team, leadership team and our members anyone can go up with a bit of you know a case and say I want this, or I I want this, or I want to push this, or I want to say this, or I want to change this policy, I want to change our strategy or procedure. But just a brief paper with no background information and just say I think you should support this. Because I say so. We've just made sure that we provide every single bit of information in a load of different formats so that people can make up their own minds. And by providing the information, I think people just trust it a lot more.
Rosie:And um councils, especially by their nature and I think I see it a lot more in housing associations are quite risk averse, especially when it comes to reputation, um, and I think you can take that risk away by providing all the information behind it. So I think I've put a lot of effort into making sure that it's evidence-based and the information is provided, and I think I would urge people to do the same If they really want to get something through and you want to get buy-in. You've got to prove it, because no one should trust anything that we say. It could be absolute rubbish, whereas if it's got the information behind it, hopefully it just makes it more um, you know, believable and justified and people can get behind it.
Simon:And that's what I found and it's been really, really nice yeah, and I and I wonder if that because I was going to mention validation when you were talking there before you did that making your journey more public and more transparent. When you get that positive reflection from the broader community, it helps validate it internally that you wouldn't get if you just did internal comms. Yeah, but there is a risk always when you are transparent and open in a lot of what you're doing, that you can, if you're unlucky, get negative people piling on, as we say in social media, and that could reflect badly bigger structures and organizations of that negative publicity and people picking holes and it becoming a problem and used as a tool in often very contentious relationships between landlords and tenants that somehow that might provide a something to get a crowbar in and pry open, you know, from a from a relationship perspective. But I think one of the things that protected you personally, um, in that process was the honesty of effort you had in that, in that you were saying this is where we're coming from. We don't have all the answers, we're on a journey. We're trying to share this journey with you so that we can all learn from this together.
Simon:So you weren't, you weren't. You were coming at it from a place where people were going and I and I know because I was one of those people going I really liked what you were saying there, rosie. Have you thought about this? So people I imagine in interacted with you in a positive way because where they saw something where you thought, they thought, oh, maybe you're missing something or there's another way that this could be looked at or approached. You were getting that and I know we've spoken about this. You've been getting feedback from a broader network of experts going love this, have you thought of that? Going love this. Have you thought of that, you know?
Rosie:and hey presto, six months later, rosie does another post where she's looked at the data of that, you know, and you've gone away and thought about it and and processed it so I think that, yeah, and I think people tenants quite often give that feedback that, um, if your, if your social media pages or your website appears to be too kind of whitewashed and clean and neat and just full of, isn't this going great? And isn't that going great as opposed to? We know this is not going great, so this is what we're doing about it. What do you think? Or you're telling us that there's a problem here, and we've heard and we've listened and this is one of the things that we've done after having done some consultation, or you know, we're sorry that we've not been getting to everything on in time that we've been wanting to do, and this is why and it's probably going to still be like that for this amount of time, but we're focusing on making sure that we're communicating with you and telling you about delays and that, when we do arrive, we're at on making sure that we're communicating with you and telling you about delays and that, when we do arrive, we're at least going to be polite and tidy up after ourselves. And that's what people have said that they want.
Rosie:And, yes, you absolutely get people who will put a negative comment against a post that's relevant to an experience they've had, but then that's fine and I think that the the council's approach and mid-deaf and housing's approach is that our social media pages are open. Anyone can comment on them, because it's just another platform for communication and we can't expect everyone to be happy all the time. Um, and there's there's good and bad, but luckily we've we've it's kind of given us an opportunity. Um, and listen. I listened to a really great podcast on I think it's the social housing round table and it was to do with I think it was titled vexed or vexatious in terms of complainants, and kind of really took that to heart and I've kind of singled out some of our most kind of borderline vexatious tenants. Just thought what, what are they vexed about? And when you really look at it, there's something that's justified.
Rosie:And and when you really really try and understand the person and their experience has been not everyone, but there's a couple that we've been able to turn around by just completely flipping on set and saying we've got it wrong. They're right in so many ways. How can we change that relationship rather than shutting down and saying you know, we're not accepting communication from that person, or let's just block comments from residents and filter them, or let's just not post about success stories when they come in just in case anyone does something negative. We just go. Lots of people look at it and they don't have the kind of relationship with us where they're going to share information. They've just seen it and I think that's the kind of relationship with us where they're going to share information. They've just seen it and I think that's most of our tenants and residents and other stakeholders. Just because they're not commenting doesn't necessarily mean that they have a strong view one way or another. But it could be beneficial and I think it's worth putting it out there.
Simon:I'd like to borrow your attention for just a moment to discuss ACO, a partner of this podcast. Just a moment to discuss ACO, a partner of this podcast. Aco, an EI company, specialises in pioneering new technologies in fire, carbon monoxide alarms and Internet of Things technology. Many know them as the go-to company for these products. In fact, this year they're celebrating 35 years in business. I particularly know them for their outstanding work in the housing sector with their Homelink offerings aiming to solve some of the industry's most serious challenges. The technology incorporates environmental sensors and a gateway to offer connected home solutions, which has a proven track record in helping landlords reduce operational costs and carbon emissions while improving residents' well-being and safety. Issues at the heart of the housing sector, like damper mould, fuel poverty and energy efficiency, are all in the crosshairs of ACO. I've been amazed at how they are innovating here, with a laser focus on unpacking some of the complex nature of these challenges in a way that answers the what next question we so desperately need at the moment. They have a great network of experts and installers. If you're in housing, they are definitely worth talking to. Trusted is an overused word, but not here. Ask around and AICO are synonymous with it. Details are in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet and at AICO. That's A-I-C-O dot, co, dot UK.
Simon:Now back to the podcast. I had a sense this conversation would dart all over the place from our previous conversations, but I wanted to jump back into something that you said that I thought was very meaningful a little while ago and if I, if we don't talk about it now, I'll probably forget it. And and you, you were talking about the, the difference between, when you're systemizing stuff, having a system that meaningfully deals with the problem. So you were talking about holding damp and mold cases open for a to do to get to a point where this can be closed off, understanding the complexities of damp and mold and the fact that this may take a couple of goes at this, that we may sort out ventilation this time round, but we might be left with something else after that that we won't really know until next winter when things settle down and we figure out how this is going to map out. And the contradiction of that to this culture of checkboxing and dealing with things in a certain time frame. And we do need to be very clear on this that there's a solid reason for that.
Simon:The housing has been poor in dealing with stuff in a reasonable time frame, but the dial potentially shifts too far in the other direction and what it puts is undue pressure to close stuff off from an auditing perspective that shouldn't be closed off.
Simon:That you you really are chasing the dial of of timings and that the the unintended consequence of that, which has been pointed out by more than just myself, is that we start chasing the wrong solutions because we want to be able to go in and show a fix.
Simon:Um, that's an interesting dilemma that housing broadly is going to have to face over the next few years as we move from this governance auditing period that we've been through, assessing how big a problem we've got with damp and mould, and now moving to actually solving the problems and our law starts to come into force in the autumn of this year in the UK, in the autumn of this year in the UK. I think that's an interesting dilemma that a lot of people are going to have to deal with and I think that's been the value of your approach of this looking at it systematically and saying no, look, we will respond to a complaint in a timely fashion and we will send the appropriate resources there to deal with it as we see it. But we can't legitimately close this off in March or April and suddenly propose that damp and mould is solved in August because there's no visible damp and mould in the walls resolved in august because there's no visible damp and mold in the walls.
Rosie:Um, yeah, that's not the reality any of us.
Rosie:If you were, if you were looking at it from that perspective, you just do all your damp and mold surveys in july and it would be such a small proportion of our homes that are affected by and you go, oh, that's lovely, so we've done. We've done so great, we've resolved 95 of all of our cases. And you could publish to say you know, these are all the effective measures that you can put in place, but it's all false because most homes are going to be free from condensation in july, whereas our view is we want to find out what's going on. So all of our surveys where we can, they'll be in the most high risk period. So we'll always do our surveys in march, april, october, november and perhaps midwinter, but even midwinter it tends to be lower. So we're just following the data and knowing that people will have most visible options very specific times of the year and those are the times to be finding out what's going on.
Rosie:But you can know, everyone knows you can make data whatever you want it to look like if you're willing to manipulate it.
Rosie:But from our perspective, we want it. We want to not not manipulate it, but manipulate when we're doing it, so we're getting the most accurate information about our homes, because it will save us money in the long term and it saves us resources by understanding what's happening, how long cases truly are going on for um, but from a risk perspective, as long as we're showing that we're making some improvements because that's what we're finding is that we need to get better at tracking the extent of what's going on. But you can see, from one year to the next, we've done this and that's made this positive impact, and then we did this and then it's it's reduced down and it was in three rooms. Now it's just in one room and it means that we can take that learning and share it across the the rest of our housing stocks, rest of our housing stock and also across the sector. But if we had falsely closed it off, then there are three individual issues that cause three individual symptoms and you'd never draw a link between one and the other.
Simon:And have you been able to communicate those incremental improvements to tenants effectively? Because that's one of the big challenges is that the expectation can be built as it will with law certainly that this is a fixable problem and for anybody that understands damp and mold relatively well knows that it could be quite a complex problem to solve over a period of time. And one of the challenges is is that when it's not fixed first time round, it has the potential to erode trust over time, that we get this reaction from tenants where you said you fixed it comes back next winter and they don't believe you anymore. Right, and one of the things you found with data is you've been able to show those incremental improvements that, yes, we might not have solved the problem in its totality this time round, but we've made a measurable improvement. Have you found you've been able to show that to the stakeholders in a way that's meaningful to them and can help build that more engaged relationship of this problem solving over time?
Rosie:in a really structural, like a structured sense. No, I don't. I think we haven't got anything really consistent in place yet, and I think part of that is going to be finding a consistent solution to properly monitoring and tracking the, the extent or the or the spread of whatever the problem is in that person's home, and making sure it's consistent across all of the reports that we've got. At the moment we don't really have that, um, at least not across all of them in an individual home basis. We do, because we kind of try to make the point of looking at it from the beginning, keeping photographs and then asking better questions, such as how long is it taking from when it's treated to when it comes back, because it's quite a key point, and also just asking tenants to really think about that, because sometimes you will.
Rosie:We've all got a different perception of time and people say, oh, it comes back every time, it comes back every 10 days. And I got into the habit of, a little while ago, treating small sections of mold during inspections and then coming back, and you know the the story would be this comes back every two weeks, whereas you'd come back six months later and you've got the same little circle of treated mold that's clean and then all around it is the original mold? Um. We've started using the, the echo uh case management tool, which has been quite helpful because it allows us to add the risk assessment on there, have the photos, but also track the interventions. When the homes are being monitored, um, but also even if even if they're not being remotely monitored, we can add the interventions and add notes about what it was like at that point with a photo and when people do have the environmental monitoring. That is really helpful because you can show something tangible, because people that I speak to generally have a really good grasp on the general principles of temperature and humidity. So when you can say we've done this intervention and it's made this difference and you've noticed these changes in your home, then it provides that little bit of reassurance.
Rosie:But I think that in the absence of not having all of those systems in place right now and it's coming into place we've just been quite realistic about it and just made sure that we have, at the very least, good communication in place that we with explaining to our residents at the point of inspection, before and afterwards, exactly how it works, and to say it's this is really complicated and we don't always know the answer right at the beginning and it is a process of elimination sometimes and we need to do this and if you're willing to be part of the solution, that can really really help. But we may well come back and having something in place to follow up automatically. But also, residents know, but they can come back to us as soon as anything changes. Um, and just regularly doing communication, random communication pieces throughout the year, just to prompt people. You can contact us about it, because the other side of it is we're finding a lot of people just for years have put up with it as a fact of life, because the reality is, you know, most of us do have little bits here and there.
Rosie:But in social housing I do believe that it is possible to eliminate. In my own home it's different because I can choose to say I can't be bothered. It would be a faff for me to put a bathroom fan in because of the way that the home is, so I'd rather open the window, let it get a bit cold and every now and then I might clean up a little spot of mould in the bathroom. But that's my choice, whereas I think in social housing. It is possible if we're all willing to work together.
Rosie:Um, so we yeah, if that's a bit of a roundabout way of answering it honestly yeah we don't completely have the systems in place and we're kind of exploring what's going to be the best way to do that. But at the moment, with the resources we've got, we're just trying to do that. But at the moment, with the resources we've got, we're just trying to maintain our relationship with tenants and just do it through a combination of tools but also just communication, so that people feel invited to talk to us about it so explain to listeners the change of location if this is on video, from an audio perspective, the?
Simon:the question I was going to ask you was about you were saying that this communication with the tenant is so key and agency seems to be a really important part of it as well that the tenant feels like they're a part of it. How scalable is that? Do you think? Kind of level of engagement you need to get a tenant to buy into a process of change over perhaps sometimes a year or more, in completely eradicating a mold problem, what? What does that look like at your kind of scale? And and can that do you think be scaled up to the much bigger organizations that, the kind of the clarions and the peabodies of this world, do you think?
Rosie:uh, yeah, I think it is. I think, speaking to my colleagues in various sized uh housing associations, um, there seems to be a bit of a sweet spot of anything up to 5 000 homes. You can maintain that local level and you generally know your tenants obviously not all of them, but we've got 3 000 homes and there's lots of people that we very rarely ever speak to but there's a lot that we, if someone calls in and says their name, you know their address without looking it up. And if they say their address, you know their name without looking it up. And that's quite nice because you know the story and they don't have to phone up and tell you the whole history, they just give their their name. You're like oh yeah, I remember you're number 25. And we've done this and we've done that, so you kind of know a little bit about them and their family and then what we've.
Rosie:I think what's been really helpful is we know already from history that if you don't get it right, you can be going back to the same home maybe a couple of times in a year and there's quite time consuming. So one of the things that we found quite helpful is to just know that that time needs to be spent and spend it at the beginning. So we'll make sure that we allocate an hour for a decent home inspection so that it's not just wandering around the home with a bit of paper and making notes and then following up later. It's bringing the tenant on that journey. So explaining everything that we're finding, bringing the tenant on that journey, so explaining everything that we're finding, showing the readings, demonstrating everything so that they're understanding where we're coming from and the challenges, because we're kind of just saying this is what we're doing and here's how it works and here's how your fan's working and you can see that spinning around. And if we demonstrate cross ventilation, that's what it looks like and we can show the effectiveness of it. We can bring in the carbon like this, a portable carbon dioxide monitor, and demonstrate it during the visit. We can say we're going to do it in this exact way and we're going to leave this room. We're going to come back 10 minutes later and we can demonstrate that the home is now healthier because the ventilation is better, the carbon dioxide levels are, but actually it didn't drop temperature. So it's kind of challenging some of the perceptions of heat loss and ventilation. That could be really, really beneficial and I think that can be done anywhere.
Rosie:And it's scary at first thinking are we going to reduce the amount of slots for our inspectors to allow for that amount of time? It's just paying for it up front because you're saving somewhere down the line and in terms of whether it's scalable, I think anything is possible and I'd definitely advocate for people considering a localized approach, so people having their own patches and splitting it into having your overall strategy and managers with an oversight, but making sure that people aren't spread so far that they don't know who their residents are and they don't know what the buildings are, because each geographical area has its own quirks as well and if you don't learn about those specific homes and that specific climate and the exposure, then you're just going to be spending so much time learning things from scratch rather than on the localized level. It's so nice being able to hear an address and picture the house and know what kind of construction it is and where it is in relation to its landscape, because then you're just saving all the investigation works. You know what you're going to find when you get there. Um, it works for operatives as well. They know where they're going, they know what materials to bring before they even go, because they know what the house is going to look like. There's nothing worse than having everything being a surprise when you go to an inspection.
Rosie:Um, and the more that we have that localized approach, the easier it is to spend the time and dedicate it to the people who live in there and the actual problem, rather than running around solving problems that someone probably solved two years ago but having to start all over again. And I think that's um. We've had some really nice feedback. Not everyone wants it.
Rosie:Some people there's other motivations and it's not they don't want the problem of the mold fixed, it's wanting a different house or wanting some other solution.
Rosie:But in general, the feedback that we've had is really good because the difference between a quick 25-minute inspection and spending a decent hour with a tenant if they're available for that time is massive and it does help to build those relationships.
Rosie:And I think one of the key things for me is when we do get feedback from residents who aren't necessarily happy for one reason or another, but they'll be so polite and will say things like I'm not annoyed with you and I'm not annoyed with the council, I'm just annoyed with this situation and I appreciate that you've done X, y and Z. It's just worrying or frustrating or scary, and I guess that's what we want is. You know, we want people to be happy and we want people to live in healthy homes, but sometimes that's not possible to do straight away and we'd rather people still feel comfortable, because they've got a relationship with us, to tell us how they feel, or to tell us they feel feel scared or unhappy or whatever it is, because that is so much better than not hearing from residents who've just given up on it.
Simon:Yeah, that's such an important point and it's finding that balance between relationship management and asset management. You know that this fix isn't not going to be fixed purely through asset management. This isn't just a technical problem to solve. This is a a habit, behavior, culture, relationship, complex fix, um, and you don't. You don't do that if you don't have a relationship with the people in those homes. I don't want to dwell too much on this because there's other questions I wanted to ask you. I knew this was going to be the case, that we'd find ourselves drilling down into rabbit holes. What's your perspective, do you think, for the next five years in housing, but particularly focus on this dampen mold problem? Where do you see it head, see it heading? Where are some of the key challenges do you think going to come from? And and some of the solutions perhaps?
Rosie:so I think, with um, with our law coming in, I think there's going to definitely be a period of instability and uncertainty where a lot of people working in this space aren't quite going to know what to do, where to go, what to prioritise, and I think that the impact that it will have on complaints and disrepair claims will further cause a bit of a distraction and take a lot of resources away from what's needed. And I think that, depending on the size of the organization and some of those ones that you've talked about but maybe have the scalability issues are probably going to be the hardest hit um, whereas I think if the smaller organizations that know what they're doing just stick with integrity to whatever the strategy was before because I might be living in complete ignorance, but I, looking at the way that we work already all of those time scales are already set out within existing legislation and the hhsrs and the right to repair scheme. If you already follow those now, you don't actually need to change anything to be compliant with our law, apart from the time scales to communicate with tenants and the time scales for inspections, but to be able to meet the repairs time scales you would have had to do that anyway. So I think that when you take a step back from it, a lot of good landlords will be meeting that by default, um, but we're all in a place where things will go wrong and we'll still have complaints and disrepair claims, because there's one thing having a policy and a strategy and there's another thing having the resources to meet it every single time. Um, but I think once that settles I think from what I've seen, because of the incredible technology and information that's coming out and the ability to network and share information, combined with the professionalization agenda, I think there's just going to be massive scope for improvement and there's going to be more and more people coming in to start or not necessarily start the journey that I've been on, but kind of carry on from where I've got to, because it is really exciting and I think more and more people get into it, and then that just opens up so many possibilities for improving and not just trying to work from the perspective of we all need to be compliant with this law. That should have always been the case and I'm really excited about that.
Rosie:I think the advancements in technology is something I'm really, really excited about and I know a lot of people worry because, in the same way as we're seeing our offices closed down and banks shut down and people can't get appointments with anyone that they want to speak to, and doctor surgeries are changing, and I think that's what people would worry about when you talk about technology being a solution to some of these issues. But my perspective on it is that it's not something that's going to be out there for everyone not everyone needs to use it but the fact that there's lots of people like me. I'm quite happy to be able to send a photo to my doctor or go in and use a machine, and that reduces my time with a doctor down from 15 minutes to maybe nothing, and it makes up for more time for people who do want to have face to face. And I think it's the same thing that if we can use better technology for people who are able to use it and want to use it, we're fixing their problem because it's convenient for them. Maybe they can get their stuff diagnosed by AI by sending in a photo, and it's an instant solution, whether it's advice or someone going straight out. It just means that there's more time than available for the people who need the face-to-face intervention or the face-to-face time, and that's what we need.
Rosie:In an environment where there are more and more people needing social housing, there are more and more people that are in need of some sort of social support and, proportionally, there's less and less resource to be able to deal with that. And if you can't bring in resources and people to deal with it, it will either get worse or you find a solution that means that we can run in a more lean way, and I think that's where the next five years is going to go, and hopefully we can do that with damp and mould so that we don't have another big case or another big failure. I'd kind of hope that we don't forget about the lessons that we've learned or should have learned already, and that we just use it for a, you know, a positive. So it's something that we all think about a lot more, um, but there's still a lot that's not known, and that's what I'd I guess I'd hope for the sector is that there's a bit more structure built into what we know, because I think you know, incredibly, for something that's been around for so long and been an issue for so long, there's still so many unknowns, and you know even just the information on actually how warm should our homes be.
Rosie:I don't think there's um a massive amount of information for people. How do you, how do you know if you had to send someone a leaflet on how to program your heating? If you want a budget, I don't think it exists. And you know what? Really? What's the best method of ventilation for each different type of home? What are the options and what should you?
Simon:what should you be aiming for um as an outcome, and I think that would be really, really helpful and hopefully it'll be nice to see that in the next five years yeah, and if we can keep the focus, hopefully there'll be the resources put into understanding this. I mean, I had this conversation with Hector from UCL, as you know, and we don't even know what a good level of microbiome is in the building. I think most of us understand that having a completely sanitised environment is not good for anybody. So at some level, some amount of organisms within the space is healthy for us. I think most people instinctively understand that, but we don't know where that line is even Not really and we understand that mold in a building is a symptom of a failure of that building, typically symptom of a failure of that building typically.
Simon:Um, but at what point does it actually become harmful is a very hard question to answer. I think one of the points that you made was really interesting that there's probably a bump in the road to come of legal cases and litigation as we move through the first stages of arab's law, as people try and figure out what's being achieved and what isn't within the frames of that new law and you've commented on this in the past. I think that there's a lot of ambiguity there, a lot of different advice from different corners, and it leaves people to think that they've got a case when they haven't, and they have got a case when they haven't, and so on. Um. You see that as a, there's probably a bit of pain to go through when ab's law comes into force, because we're already seeing it on the ground. Aren't we, the, the solicitors and organizations being set up to encourage people to claim um because of damp and mold?
Rosie:yeah, yeah, and we saw, following the actual, when our bachelor died or when it kind of the inquest came out, we saw a short period where conduct was better and the protocol was being followed and claimant solicitors would be saying you know, tell us what you're going to do, give us the schedule of rates, do the works, and then we'll have a discussion about compensation or whatever it is. But unfortunately it slipped back into what it was before, which is don't let them in to do the works and then quite often they would kind of just slip off so they would stop representing the client but forget to actually tell them that they weren't dealing with the case anymore. And we find that you just get big periods of maybe six or eight months where you don't hear. But in the meantime they've been advised not to let anyone in, not to treat them old, because they're advised that that will make the case better. But that's not how the protocol works. Protocol is.
Rosie:All you need to do is evidence. You can take a photo, you can have your expert inspection demonstrates what it was like at that point. There's no need in any situation to leave mold and even outside of this, repair claims. We'll say the same to tenants. You know you don't need to leave it for an inspection, take a photo or just tell us. Well, why would we disbelieve you that it was there? Um, and we're just seeing that happen more and more, and the conduct's just getting worse and worse, um, and unfortunately, that just means that there's going to be more people, um, that are left, that are left at risk and the.
Rosie:The reality is that, although we shouldn't have needed it, it did make a big difference having a face and a name to put towards this health risk, and that face is of Awabeshak. He's not the only child to have died as a result of damp and mould in the home. He's probably one of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, that are affected by it, if not hundreds of thousands that are affected by it, and it's not going to stop if we don't get this balance of what we need in terms of good quality homes, good quality ventilation, affordable heating, social support, mental health, support services for people who don't speak english as a first language. It's all of those things need to come together, because a law won't fix it. It takes, it's going to take a change of attitude yeah, no, I agree everyone involved.
Simon:I agree completely. I mean, one of the things that's marked the last couple of years out for you and certainly your output, has been environmental data. Tell me a little bit about your journey of discovery into sensors and starting to go oh my god, I can actually see the houses that we're trying to treat in a new way, that. That.
Rosie:That's been really fascinating to see with yourself, because you've looked at so many different angles of this data and tried to overlay it with what you're seeing on the grounds, the cases, the, the processes um, that's that's been a meaningful journey for you over the last couple of years that the practically using data to understand the problems that you've got yeah, yeah, it really is, and I think that the the reality is that when you do any sort of technical inspection in a home, you're only getting a snapshot of that one day, and I don't necessarily think that it's always true, but the bit of advice that I was handed over when I started was, if you're ever doing a damp and mould inspection and you're not sure which house it is, just look for the one that's got all the windows wide open.
Rosie:And a lot of people will say that is the case. And you go in and you think, well, these windows have only been open today, but probably you could see. You know, the rubbers are normally melted to the to the frame, um, but the reality is it's not. That is a stereotype, because a lot of the homes I'm going to they are being over ventilated and people are keeping windows open all day, every day, to desperately try and resolve the issues.
Simon:Or they're dreadfully embarrassed about the situation and, like most people that have pride, don't want people to come into a home that's damp and mouldy. So there are so many drivers why people will run around for hours or days before an inspection hours or days before an inspection trying to get the hope for fear of losing rent tenancy for just embarrassment over the state of their property, and you get people the other end of the spectrum don't care at all, you know, um, but there's so many reasons, aren't there, why people like that snapshot you're getting on the day is not a reflection of real life.
Rosie:yeah, yeah, yeah, there's, there's so many reasons and it's, and what we've tried to do in those inspections is just uh, kind of break down some of those challenges and go, you know it doesn't matter. And when we talk about laundry, that's the biggest thing that people always felt attacked about is you don't even ask, you don't say, do you try your laundry indoors? Because it sounds like it's an accusation and people will always say no, because if they do, then they'll feel like they're getting told off, whereas we just kind of start the conversation. As you know, do you know what? We all dry laundry indoors. So don't stress, I do it, my mates do it, your neighbors do it. If you're going to do it, this is the best way so you don't cause any issues.
Rosie:But anyway, the um, the environmental monitoring, where it's been most useful. So it got recommended to me by a colleague from coastline housing um and he was really kind enough to share a little bit of time. Let me have a look at what they were doing and just roughly how it worked and how they were using it and translated it for me in a way that just made sense. We had this problem. This is the data. This is what we found. This is how we solved it. So I was all over it and I was really really keen to find out how we could do this and, just by chance, it was something that we were kind of already exploring anyway. Um, we had all the kit in our stores because we were already using the same system for monitoring smoke and carbon monoxide, um in our homes, and this was just a tag on, so we could just use the environmental sensors with existing kit. Um, yeah, and it just opened up this whole world, because I think where, where I'd got to before is we had those snapshots from inspections, but you just don't.
Rosie:You just don't know what's going on. So you might go in and, like I said, find that all the windows are open, but you also sometimes would go to an inspection and the trickle vents were shut, but they had just been shut on that day because something had happened or someone was cleaning or the kids just shut it and you just don't know what was happening outside of that snapshot. And quite often you go at a certain time of day and the heating's on, so we were finding that we were just discarding heating issues because it seemed warm when we were there. Or you go and do an inspection in winter. It's freezing outside, you come into a house and it always feels warm and it's not. Until we started measuring temperature during inspections, we realized that the homes we're visiting weren't as warm as we thought.
Rosie:But then, on a longer term, it just answered all those questions because we can give generic advice and that's all you can do. If you're not collecting long-term information, all you can do is give generic information to someone who's already struggling and already feels at a loss because they don't know what's happening and you're giving them this whole list of things maybe an a4 list of things that they might be able to do. And when you're a busy working family or you've got children or family with disabilities, or you've got money problems or you've got mental health issues, you do not want to go through an a4 checklist of things that you might need to do that might or might not resolve your issues. Um, so what it's enabled us to do is, with much more confidence, say what you're doing here is great. Don't stop that. You're doing a great job with your heating or ventilation, with your heating or your ventilation. That's an issue, and it's an issue by this much and if you changed it by this much, by doing this exact thing, you would then bring your risk down to this level. And if you're not sure and you just need us to keep an eye on it for you we can do that. Or you can look at your resident app and every time you make a little change, you can just see and know whether it's been worth doing. So then you can decide how much was the effort, how much was the cost, what's the benefit, and then just gradually track that over time, because I think we all just need a little bit of positive reinforcement to know that what we're doing is making a difference.
Rosie:And that's been the biggest thing is just looking at that data so that it's something useful. Data so that it's something useful. And we've kind of followed the same pattern as what we did with the data about repairs is look at it on a individual property basis, then start looking at a whole stock basis and then just narrow it down, figure out what we can learn, share it, look at the individual property basis. Once you shared that, expand it again, break it down, and it's just that constant. You can just use the systems and collect the data and get a few insights and it's super, super clever. But you know, we as people, and people that live in homes can be quite clever as well, and if you give us the same information, we can make our own insights and do more with it and have you found the data has been a good learning tool for you?
Simon:Because I think what's differentiated you from others perhaps is at a surface level. These apps and dashboards will tell you that these properties are red flagged and that property is at risk, or so on and so forth. But I got a real sense that you wanted to go that next layer, down on the data, and try and understand what you were seeing and why and why you were seeing certain results like vapor pressure differential, and starting to try and understand the nuances and the values of certain data sets and what they can tell you about those spaces. And for listeners to remind listeners, you are not a data scientist, you know um, so anybody can do this. You've just got to have an interest and a willingness to learn. Has that been one of the values of the data? Is just that, this opening up the building in a way for you to go? I wonder why am I seeing this and not this? Or seeing this here and not there? Is it? Has it been a lot of that for you on that journey?
Rosie:yeah, I think it has. It's just it's that as humans, we could be quite perceptive in lots of ways and we can draw our conclusions based on our experience or our knowledge. Training and computer technology is advancing so quickly and, like you say, there's data scientists that can do really, really clever things for that data. But the the data that's being collected by a machine and then transported somewhere else, it can never know what really was going on at that time, um, and you could build it, and it is carrying on being built in such a way that it is getting smarter. But when you're looking at it through a different perspective, you can just start to see the relationship between one thing and another, and some of them are so subtle that you'd have to be. And what I find and this is what I mean about getting a bit sad and obsessive about it is if you really look at a home and you look at every room and you look at it over the period of a whole day and then compare it to the next day, you can just start to see some patterns.
Rosie:And, as a couple of examples, we we had a home a little while ago that had been experiencing issues and it just wasn't structural, um, and we'd done a lot of testing, um, but we just noticed one little pattern where we'd had the conversations, we'd given the guidance, the usual stuff, um, but we just noticed that whenever there was a spike in the bathroom humidity, which we knew related to showering, there was always a spike in bedroom humidity. That would happen about five minutes afterwards. And we then had the conversation with the tenant to say, when you talk us about your habit, do you turn the fan on and then keep the door shut? And then keep it door, keep the door shut afterwards. He'd say, well, normally I put the fan on, I open the window and then when I finish sharing I open the door to let the steam out. And it was a really, really good fan and it was humidistat controlled. But of course it's not going to be working how it's meant to be working, because it's pulling in some air from outside through the window and then the rest of it's migrating out into the hallway, directly into the bedroom, which was kind of the coolest room, and it just started causing these problems.
Rosie:But you kind of have to look at it in that real, you can look at it in that really specific way, and then in another we had a home that had loads of different issues and we used it kind of to empower the tenant and said you know, you've got this data, it's for you, we're not collecting it just for us, you can look at it and you can challenge us. And their perspective was there's a structural issue, because whenever it rains it's worse. So we kind of use it to start tracking every single weather event. So you go this is the storm, this is the worst rain that we've had in the last five years. But we can see the humidity doesn't rise, the damp mold risk doesn't rise.
Rosie:But then we've noticed this little pattern here. Something's gone on for a two-week period where the damp mold risk has gone up to 100. What's happened? And when you look at it, and you keep looking at it, you go are those dates seem familiar? That was the February half term. So when all the kids are home from school the risk spikes up to 100. But when you get a five year weather event, the risk stays the same. So you can kind of just say well, we know it's a ventilation and humidity problem. Yeah, and that's how we can use it. But equally we can go really big. Look at the whole stock and just see what's our median, what's normal, what normal, what's not normal.
Simon:You know, homes that are affected by damp and mold look like this and homes that don't look like that interesting because there's loads of other factors to it did you say you had to leave a half pass, by the way, rosie? Yeah, um, just one final question, then, before we finish up, for someone that's starting their journey into this sector and and wants to go on a similar journey to you and and understand and get this insight and enthusiasm for the data and the systems of dealing with it, with this well sure top piece of advice for them to get interested in this or where to find support or to start to learn what would you say to them?
Rosie:I think it depends on um, on what your learning style is. Um, there's some really, really good publications out there on damp and mold and I think that you you do have to start on the basis of proper knowledge. There's a lot of stuff on the internet, but not all of it's true and not all of it's good. So I think that starting with a really decent publication and they're not necessarily cheap, but I'm just looking at my shelf um, my favorite is probably with mike parrot. I think he's got some really good, easy to understand um publications on investigation of damp and mould and because he's got a background in social housing, it's really, really helpful because a lot of the homes that he's looking at look like our homes and the residents look like our residents. And also, graham Coleman has got some excellent YouTube videos where he goes into masses of detail about everything you'd need to know and some really great kind of visuals on that.
Rosie:Outside of that, I think social housing is excellent at networking when you get into the right groups, and we do lots of it, and I think we should do more of it because we have just such a unique opportunity to share the information that we have and we've got millions of homes across the UK and we've got absolutely no competition with each other. We can work in the same streets and own houses and essentially it's our business, but we're essentially not-for-profit, especially councils. So it's's very, very rare that you get an environment like that where you've got all these people working in the same space, and there should be none of that hoarding of information, because there's no commercial sensitivity. In that sense we're not losing business to anyone.
Rosie:Um, and when, when you network well and you find a decent group, I've just um, yeah, I've just really found that people can be so helpful and and we'll share their time. And from my perspective, what I've learned is that you should definitely learn your own stuff and make sure you've got your facts right and validate your own information. But equally, there's a lot of people that have been there and done it and they can just tell you what works and what doesn't work. And as long as they're willing to share how they've got to that point, um, you can then just exponentially grow your own knowledge. But also I've kind of made sure that I've been willing to share it back and give back to the sector.
Simon:Yeah, possible by sharing it and you've done that in spades and I've been so fascinated to talk to you about your journey and your perspective on this because I think it's been a refreshing. But be so open and honest, you know, with an honesty, of effort behind it and that's what's come through, and I'll link to your LinkedIn profile and other things that you've done, because I think there's so much that can be learned from that, going all the way back to your initial damp and mold reports and reflections at the very beginning. I think we're really good start for people to have a look at. Um, rosie, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Um, I knew I was going to run out of time with you, um, so look. Thanks a million, really appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
Simon:Before you go, can I ask a favor? If you enjoyed the podcast and know somebody else who might be interested, do spread the word and let's keep building this community. This podcast was brought to you in partnership with erico, echo, ultra protect, imbiotegrees all great companies who share the vision of the podcast and aren't here by accident. Your support of them helps them support this show. Do check them out in the links and in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet. And don't forget to check out the YouTube channel by the same name, with plenty more content due to come on that channel. Thanks very much. See you next week.
