Debate contribution: Housing: Disrepair, Damp and Mould

Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on 24 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Gordon Lyons

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

24 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Housing: Disrepair, Damp and Mould

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5404793

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank all Members for their contributions to the debate, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to the motion. Last week, Mr Carroll said:

"I find myself agreeing with the Communities Minister, maybe for the first time ever." — [Official Report (Hansard), 17 February 2026, p26, col 2].

This week, I find myself agreeing with the Member for West Belfast. We could go outside and check, but I do not think that the sky has fallen in. I completely agree with what he said about this being a serious issue. I do not think that anybody in the House who is in any way connected with their constituency could fail to recognise that the issue affects many people and increasingly so. I make it clear to the House that I am committed to improving the quality and safety of our homes. That is a clear objective of the housing supply strategy, and I am taking forward several actions that are focused on ensuring that everyone, regardless of their tenure or the type of house in which they live, has a good-quality, safe and warm home. That is why, on 5 February, I launched the warm healthy homes strategy, which sets out a long-term cross-government approach to lifting households out of fuel poverty and ensuring that everyone in Northern Ireland lives in a warm, healthy home. The strategy reflects one of the most extensive engagement exercises undertaken by my Department. It has benefited from contributions from a broad range of individuals who know what it means to struggle to pay energy bills and from the organisations that support them. The focus is on improving energy efficiency for low-income and vulnerable households, raising housing standards and ensuring that those standards are properly measured. It also aims to protect consumers by improving access to reliable advice and better metering so that people can manage their energy use and bills. Work is progressing on the development of an initial action plan that will agree timelines, assign responsibilities and coordinate the steps needed to implement the first phase of the strategy. One of the main themes in the strategy is improving the energy efficiency of homes. It also includes a strategic action to launch an ambitious, long-term warm healthy homes fund that will seek to deliver increased investment over its first five years. It is anticipated that that fund will launch in 2027 and will continue to take a whole-house approach to retrofitting, delivering energy efficiency measures to the households on the lowest incomes. The final scheme design will be shaped by further public consultation, which will be published in the spring. Since its launch in 2014, the outgoing affordable warmth scheme has invested over £140 million in improving the energy efficiency of over 31,000 private sector homes, helping low-income owner-occupied and private rented households across Northern Ireland to reduce heat loss, lower their fuel bills and live in warmer, healthier conditions. As the largest provider of social housing, the Housing Executive's landlord programme of energy efficiency or thermal improvement works for its housing stock continues. It has spent £42·71 million on energy efficiency or thermal improvement works to properties this year and has a planned spend of £41·75 million in 2026-27. The Housing Executive has now reached a critical juncture. Its homes, one of our most important public assets, are at increasing risk of significant deterioration and decline if urgent action is not taken. It has been confirmed that the treatment of Housing Executive borrowing will form part of negotiations with the UK Government on a new Northern Ireland fiscal framework. While that confirmation is welcome, a solution is needed urgently. That is one of my main priorities as Minister, and I continue to raise the borrowing issue at every possible opportunity. I urge the Government to provide the necessary approval so that the Housing Executive is permitted to borrow immediately without further delay. On that point, I assure Mr Carroll that this is not about the reclassification of the Housing Executive; it is to treat the Housing Executive in the way in which local authorities treat their housing arms in other parts of the UK. It is absolutely not about a reclassification. I hope that that provides some assurance to him, and I hope that he joins others in the Chamber in fighting for that change. Moving on to the private rented sector, I am progressing a wider programme of reform to improve quality and strengthen standards. I have already introduced minimum fire and electrical safety standards, giving stronger protection for tenants, and improving energy efficiency is a key priority in the programme. Work is already under way to develop new minimum standards for the private rented sector. It is complex, cross-departmental work, but getting it right will deliver long-term benefits for tenants, including helping to reduce damp and mould and increasing thermal comfort. I have also transferred responsibility for the landlord registration scheme to local councils. It is a significant step in raising standards and complements broader policy work on raising conditions in the private rented sector. Evidence indicates that registered landlords are more likely to meet their wider legal responsibilities. Building on that work, we will shortly launch a consultation on amendments to the underpinning landlord registration legislation, and a key proposal will be to require landlords to confirm compliance with fitness, safety and energy efficiency duties during registration, further strengthening enforcement and improving outcomes for tenants. I hope that that goes some way to answering the queries that Cathy Mason had in regard to the work that I am doing and Mr Gildernew's queries as well. I will check with officials in the Department. This should all have been shared with the Member, through that Committee, multiple times. If that is not the case, something has gone wrong, but all that information should have been provided. I believe that it has, but we will check that out. My officials closely monitored Awaab's law as it progressed in England. I hope that this will answer some of the questions that Kellie Armstrong and others had. While that was monitored as it was progressing, I did not just wait; I took immediate action to ensure that people living in social homes were protected. We developed new damp and mould guidance that was issued to all social housing providers in January 2024. Since 2023-24, the Department, as the regulator, has undertaken periodic surveys to ensure that registered housing associations appropriately manage all cases of damp and mould in their stock and have policies and procedures in place to address damp and mould. Compared with England, we have a much smaller social housing sector, consisting of the Housing Executive and a small number of housing associations, which are registered with my Department for that purpose as well as being registered charities. Therefore, we have good relationships with those providers and work with them to ensure that there is appropriate oversight and accountability. There are already measures and standards in place here that provide similar protections for tenants in Northern Ireland. Legislation here, specifically the Housing (Northern Ireland) Order 1981, includes the standard of fitness for housing in Northern Ireland and requires homes to be:

"free from dampness prejudicial to the health of the occupants".

That is distinct from the position in other jurisdictions in that it links the condition of the property to its impact on occupants' health. Environmental health officers in councils already have powers to address damp and serious disrepair by enforcing the statutory minimum fitness standard across all housing tenures.

Where we do not have equivalent protections that seem necessary to me, I will take action. That is why I am consulting on proposals to revise and enhance the Decent Homes Standard that applies to all social housing here. Some of the new proposals include an enhanced approach to damp and mould and the introduction of requirements to risk-assess and triage repairs for investigation, including time frames, with emergency and urgent repairs prioritised appropriately. If those proposals are supported through the consultation, it will also help to align Northern Ireland with the principles of that legislation in England. I take issue when others say that nothing has been done on it. To begin with, we were in a different starting position from England. There were already actions that others here were able to take if problems were encountered. In social housing, the complaints process with the landlord and the housing associations is available. The Department could take action. Of course, the legal route was also there, because we have the standards that they would have failed to keep. I believe that avenues were in place. However, additional changes were needed, which is why we are bringing in the Decent Homes Standard as well. Those are routes that can be taken. However, if Members believe, and it is the will of the House today, that legislation replicates that and improves what is already in place, we are happy to do that. I will, however, still progress with the work that we are currently doing, especially around the Decent Homes Standard, because that will introduce the time frames that most people here are interested in. No one really went into the detail this afternoon of specifically what it is in Awaad's law that they want to see extended. I assume that it is those time frames. They will be coming in anyway. There are already avenues for redress, including legal avenues for redress. I believe that all those things are, largely, covered. If additional legislative protections are needed, that can be put in place. However, I want to make sure that we continue with this work, because that will make a difference in the shorter term; and, anyway, legislation will require those issues to be followed up on, and it will only be enabling legislation. Of course, we are bringing in some of the other work as well for the private rented sector, specifically in relation to minimum energy efficiency standards. To pick up on the amendment moved by Mr Durkan, I certainly support the amendment brought by my party colleagues, because our focus needs to be on getting the resources in place that can actually make a difference. However, I believe that there is support around the Chamber for Mr Durkan's amendment, which means that a decision will not be taken on Pam Cameron's amendment. That is fair enough. I say to Mr Durkan that we are on the same page in wanting to make sure that those issues are addressed. I encourage him to come to my office with the specific queries. I want to check some of the issues that he has raised and why they have happened. I mean that sincerely. If there have been issues, I want to make sure that they are addressed, because I have been assured that those inspections are already in place at the point of a property becoming available. I understand what he is going to say: he is going to say that those need to continue through the time of a tenancy and not just between tenancies. That will already happen anyway because of the development of the temporary accommodation standards framework. That is commitment in the Housing Executive's strategic action plan for temporary accommodation. Work has already started on the development of that framework. The intention is that it will include physical standards, suitability standards and service standards for all types of temporary accommodation. That work is ongoing; it will happen anyway. I appreciate that Members still want to support his amendment, but I can assure him that work is ongoing on what he is looking for. I appeal to him to let me know about any specific issues that he has as well. I have addressed most of the other issues that were raised. I hope that Cathy Mason will not mind my coming back to a couple of the points that she made. I think that she accused me of trying to blame somebody else for this. I am certainly not blaming —.

I am happy to give way.

I can assure her that I am not blaming anyone else. I take full responsibility. That is why I am driving forward the social housing development programme and was so passionate when speaking about social housing at the Committee. I want to make sure that we get the programme done. I want there to be progress made on social housing. I need the support of others in the House in order to do that, but I am determined to do things that make a difference and bring about change. She said that I do not seem to be interested. After having heard me outline the steps that we have taken over the past number of months, I hope that she will perhaps change her mind. She also previously said in Committee that I do not "do housing". People may disagree with me and with some of the actions that I have taken, and that is fine. I can take it, but I hope that, if they look at my record and see what has been achieved in the past two years, Members will agree that social housing has been a focus for me. That is why we have brought in, for the first time, the intermediate rent scheme, which I hope to develop. It is why we have made changes to the housing selection scheme, brought in additional protections for private tenancies, ring-fenced money for homelessness, introduced the housing supply strategy, made housing a Programme for Government commitment and, in what will make one of the biggest changes of all, introduced the warm healthy homes strategy. Housing is therefore not a secondary consideration for me. Rather, it is one of the most important priorities in the Department. It certainly takes up most of our time, because we know that having warm, healthy homes can make such a difference to our population. It is why today's debate is so important and why housing more generally is so important. I am committed to doing everything that I can to make sure that changes are put in place to enable us to make a real difference to the lives of people right across Northern Ireland. I look forward to having the House's support to do that.

2,401 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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