Damp and mould is forcing London households out of their homes for an average of two months, according to a new analysis of emergency accommodation across the capital.

Emergency accommodation provider Jigsaw Conferences analysed proprietary data from 1,246 London households that were evacuated from their homes between July 2025 and June 2026.

According to the analysis, maintenance was the most common reason for households being displaced, accounting for 15.6% of all cases (194 out of 1,246) while leaks were the second most common cause, displacing 1 in 10 households (10%) for an average of 44.1 nights.

‘Damp and mould’ was the third most common cause, accounting for nearly 1 in 10 affected London households (9.6%). This comes following the introduction of Awaab’s Law in October last year, which sets out that social housing landlords in England must investigate significant damp and mould hazards within 10 working days.

Damp and mould caused households to be displaced for more than 2 months (61.9 days) on average, which was the second longest duration behind ‘cladding and fire remediation work’ (117.5 days on average).

From 30 November 2026, Phase 2 of Awaab’s Law comes into effect, which will require social landlords to investigate and remedy emergency fire hazards within 24 hours, while significant fire hazards must be investigated within 10 working days, with repairs then completed within 5 working days of that investigation finishing.

Reason for decant ranked by number of cases

Reason for leaving
Number of cases
Percentage of total
Average number of nights
Maintenance
194
15.6%
52.3
Leak
125
10.0%
44.1
Damp & Mould
120
9.6%
61.9
Utilities/Outage
91
7.3%
17.9
Flood
45
3.6%
39.8
Fire
44
3.5%
59.8
Sewage Issues
40
3.2%
58.2
Structural damage/issues
34
2.7%
43.5
Major Works
33
2.6%
39.5
Lift outage
32
2.6%
42.9
Infestation
20
1.6%
50.1
Asbestos removal/works
16
1.3%
22.0
Risk to safety due to ASB/Crime
10
0.8%
31.1
Customer vulnerability
6
0.5%
11.8
Environmental/Deep Clean
6
0.5%
19.2
Property insecure
4
0.3%
27.5
Cladding/fire remediation work
2
0.2%
117.5
Mandy Kaur, Managing Director at Jigsaw Conferences commented,

“These figures put a number on something housing providers know only too well, that decanting a family isn’t a quick fix, and the reason behind it has a huge bearing on how long they’re away from home.”

“Damp and mould, leaks and general maintenance are consistently among the most common reasons households need to be moved out, and in the case of damp and mould, we’re seeing some of the longest average stays away from home of any category. That’s a significant amount of disruption for residents, and it underlines why efficient, well-managed temporary accommodation matters so much to housing providers trying to do right by their tenants.”