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Fenland DC has been asked to take part in the Healthy Homes
Project
 
Healthy Homes Project background:
 
·        
The Healthy Homes Project is a joint project with
the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Department of Health
and Social Care (DHSC) to test different enforcement approaches to
damp and mould. The primary objectives are to boost the capability
and capacity of enforcement teams, and
gather data on what works when it comes to enforcement of damp and
mould hazards.
 
·        
The funding is being used to test whether a package
of interventions have the intended impact and represent good value
for money; and to look at the wider societal impacts of enforcing
on damp and mould hazards.
 
·        
It’s an ambitious project but one that we
think will really help strengthen our evidence on what works when
it comes to damp and mould enforcement and deliver benefits for
local authorities, central government, and ultimately – and
most importantly - tenants.
 
How
will we gather evidence on what works?
 
·        
It is vital that we gather the strongest possible
evidence from this project through the evaluation. We have worked
closely with external evaluation experts and will be running the
Healthy Homes project as a randomised controlled trial (RCT). This
approach is considered ‘gold standard’ by experts and
will allow us to confidently draw conclusions about how effective
the approach is.
 
·        
For the RCT to work it’s necessary to randomly
assign areas into two groups: the group implementing the
interventions; and a partially funded control group where members
provide data but do not implement the interventions.
 
What
will participation involve?
 
·        
We are hoping that every local authority receiving
this email will be able to participate in the Healthy Homes
Project. By signing up to participate, each local authority will be
randomly allocated into either the treatment or control groups once
signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) have been received (see below).
 

Treatment Group
The treatment group will be
allocated up to £130,000 in 24/25 to deliver the
following interventions to support damp and mould enforcement:
 
·        
Additional resource in your team;
·        
Standardised training across your existing
team;
·        
Improved communications and engagement with
landlords and tenants;
·        
Improved equipment, i.e. tools to measure damp and
mould; and
·        
Improved data collection tools and
support.
 
Respondents will need to
provide data to support the evaluation, at the outset of the fund
(likely April) and the end of the funding (March 2025). This is
still being developed but likely to capture data on PRS
inspections, inspections, enforcement activity and staffing over
the previous 12 months (covering April 2024 to March 2025, and
where available, April 2023 to March 2024).
 
Full guidance will be provided
separately to authorities in the treatment group.
 

Control group
The control group will receive
up to £11,000 in 24/25 to provide data returns to
support the evaluation. They will not be required to implement any
specific interventions. Group members will need to commit to
providing data as above.
 
This control group plays a
vitally important role in providing comparison data (reflecting
business as usual) so that we can ensure we have a robust
evaluation.
 
Decision
 
Cllr
Sam Hoy approves the Council taking part in the DLUHC Healthy Homes
project to tackle damp and mould growth effectively in homes,
including receiving funding of either 11k or 130k as a project
participant.