EHJ July 2005

After a wait of almost seven years there can be no doubt that the Housing Health & Safety Rating System (HH&SRS) or "rating system" to use its abbreviated moniker, is shortly to be implemented. Rarely has such a change in legislation caused as much professional controversy as the rating system. Put simply, most EHPs either love it or loathe it. Yet soon, all EHPs involved in housing enforcement and improving housing conditions will have to learn to use and accept it.

I have shied away from expressing a view on the subject for fear of offending the "housing purists". Among this group there are many who firmly believe the rating system will lead to the creation of a dilapidated housing stock. Whatever the truth, only time will tell, for it has taken 86 years for the manual on unfit houses (which later became the fitness standard) to be considered outdated and inadequate for assessing modern day housing conditions.

EHPs have long known the shortcomings of the fitness standard. Cases such as R v Bristol City Council, ex parte Everett, which found that the definition of "prejudicial to health" (to which statutory nuisance provisions relate) should exclude accidental physical injury, confused matters even more.

What joy then to be presented with the rating system, which is not a fixed standard but instead uses an evidence-based approach to identify and assess hazards, evaluating the probable severity of the outcome for occupants and visitors. Some months ago I attended a Warwick University and CIEH HH&SRS practitioners course where it was reinforced to me just how empowering the rating system is, enabling the housing EHP to make an "informed" professional judgement on the condition of dwellings.

The rating system allows a scientific and methodical evaluation of a dwelling and the conditions therein. Part of the strength of the system undoubtedly lies in the statistical data and literature reviews, which have been used to create the hazard profiles for each of the 24 hazards. This in theory should negate the need for torturous arguments with landlords and managing agents about why it is unacceptable to have kitchen cupboards located above cookers, or windows above showers. I could go on and provide an extensive list of similar scenarios where my professional judgement and common sense approach has not previously been considered valid. This is because there is no obvious provision within the Building Act 1984, Public Health Acts or fitness standard for dealing with such issues. A situation often hindered by the lack of readily available "proof" to convince reluctant landlords of the potential for harm from such hazards.

Often in these situations I have felt that it is quite ironic that as an EHP I have the ability to require an individual's employer to provide safe access and egress in a workplace yet a dwelling need only be "fit for human habitation" without any requirement for the health and safety of occupants to be safeguarded from similar everyday hazards.

The rating system will herald a new age for the housing EHP, enabling the focus to shift from the routine restoration of bricks and mortar. Instead EHPs will rightly focus on safeguarding people within dwellings from the direct impact to their health from an unhealthy and unsafe, surrounding environment.