Almost 12,000 properties in Stoke have reported damp and mould problems
The City Council shows complaints had been received from tenants in 11,955 properties
Almost 12,000 council house tenants in Stoke-on-Trent have complained about living in damp and mouldy properties in a 17-month period.
Data from Stoke-on-Trent City Council shows complaints had been received from tenants in 11,955 properties between August 2023 and January this year.
The complaints resulted in 16,595 jobs – including mould washing, painting, plastering, and fan repairs – being completed.
Seventy-two tenants have had to leave their homes due to the state of the properties.
A total of 860 ‘disrepair claims’ have been lodged between April 2023 and January 2025.
Bentilee tops the list for ‘disrepair claims’ regarding damp and mouldy council houses – followed by Meir.
Now the council has surveyed 12,743 homes, installed more than 1,000 extractor fans, and replaced hundreds of roofs, boilers and loft insulations.
It comes after the council launched its Find It, Fix It campaign in November 2023.
"There is still work to do”
Its director of housing management Paul Parkinson said: “We committed to launching a campaign to all our residents that we were here to tackle damp and mould.
"It was a zero-tolerance approach so if somebody is on the phone saying we’ve got damp and mould, or even if we spotted damp and mould, we would run it through the system and make sure it was repaired in a timely fashion.
“We also set up a dedicated team, so previously to the campaign it was just treated as a normal repair but in order to escalate the priority and the importance we set up a dedicated team of surveyors and work people to go out and fix the problem.
"Also we moved across some people from housing management in order to work with the tenants should they need to move out of the property temporarily.
“We are now starting to see a decrease in the amount of damp and mould complaints or the repairs that we are doing. So it shows it’s actually having an impact and that it’s working.”
It took an average of 22.2 days to tackle damp and mould issues in tenants’ homes in 2024.
Councillor Chris Robinson, cabinet member for housing, said: “I meet with the tenants’ board every six weeks and I never known them to be as confident. There is still work to do.”