If you manage rental homes, 2026 is when “air quality” stops being a nice-to-have and starts behaving like a costs-and-compliance problem.
Not because tenants have suddenly become fussy. Because the direction of travel is clear: the New Decent Homes Standard is being rebuilt around safety, warmth, and damp prevention, and it explicitly treats things like mechanical ventilation as a building component that must be kept in a reasonable state of repair.
This blog is about the practical bit. What landlords can do now to reduce risk, protect tenants, and avoid the same issues coming back every winter.
The New Decent Homes Standard. The Parts That Matter For Air Quality
The policy statement sets out five criteria. For air quality, two are doing the heavy lifting:
Criterion D. Thermal comfort. Homes must provide a “reasonable degree of thermal comfort”. This includes Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES), and it also expects the primary heating system to heat the whole home and be programmable by tenants.
Criterion E. Damp and mould. Homes will be non-decent if damp and mould is not remedied. The intent is prevention, not endless reactive repairs.
The dates matter as well. While the new DHS enforcement date is set out as 1 April 2035, the MEES milestones arrive much sooner. Social rented homes hit EPC C requirements from 1 April 2030, and private rented homes are expected to reach EPC C by 1 October 2030.
So, if your plan is “we’ll deal with it later”, later is doing you no favours.
Cold Homes Create The Conditions For Dampness. Damp Creates The Conditions For Complaints
Most damp and mould that landlords end up paying for is not caused by one dramatic leak. It is the slow stuff.
Cold surfaces plus moisture equals condensation. Condensation is what feeds mould. Once mould appears, you are no longer talking about cosmetic work. You are talking about repeat visits, tenant distrust, and an issue that spreads.
Thermal upgrades help, but you can still have a warm home with poor air. The missing piece is often ventilation that actually moves moisture out.
This is why the policy statement calling out mechanical ventilation as a key component is important. It is a quiet signpost that ventilation is no longer “optional kit”. It is part of what a decent home looks like.
“Air Quality” Is Not Abstract. It Is Specific Things You Can Measure
When ventilation is poor, indoor air builds up quickly. In real terms, that usually means:
Higher CO₂ in bedrooms and living rooms overnight. People wake up groggy and headaches become common.
More moisture stays in the property after showers, cooking, and drying clothes. More lingering pollutants from cleaning products and general indoor life.
That is why monitoring matters. A landlord needs numbers they can act on.
At Objective Health, this is where our Heating & Ventilation range fits the real world. Smart air quality monitors can track CO₂, humidity and airborne particles, and give you evidence of problem rooms and patterns, not guesswork.
The Landlord-Friendly Approach. Reduce Risk In Layers
If you want fewer recurring damp jobs and fewer “it’s back again” emails, a layered approach is the sensible one.
1. Measure.
Use CO₂ and humidity data to identify the rooms that are failing first (typically bathrooms, bedrooms, small kitchens, converted flats).
2. Ventilate properly.
For many properties, the goal is consistent extraction and fresh air without dumping heat. Heat recovery ventilation systems exist for this exact reason.
3. Add continuous sanitisation where it makes sense.
Biovitae lighting is useful as a background control measure in spaces that repeatedly struggle, especially bathrooms and poorly ventilated areas. It is not a replacement for fixing the root cause. It is a way of lowering the microbial load in the environment while you do.
Enforcement Is Moving Toward Real Consequences
For private rented homes, the policy statement is clear that local authorities will enforce the DHS, and it flags stronger enforcement tools, including higher maximum fines for non-compliance and the ability to issue immediate civil penalties for serious failures.
You do not need to catastrophise that into doom. You simply treat it as a prompt to document your approach and show a preventative plan.
What Objective Health Does In This Picture
Landlords are the ones carrying the responsibility here. Our role is to make the practical side easier. That means providing straightforward options across:
Ventilation and heat recovery systems to control moisture and airflow. Smart monitoring so you can evidence conditions and target interventions. Biovitae lighting as a low-disruption, scalable control measure in problem areas.
If you are planning upgrades around MEES and thermal comfort, it makes sense to plan air quality alongside it, because damp problems do not respect spreadsheets.
If you want help matching solutions to your stock type, Objective Health can help you map out a sensible, property-by-property approach, starting with the rooms that generate the most recurring cost.