About Us

The UK Centre for Mould Safety publishes the technical guidance, competency framework and position papers that UK housing, surveying and the building trades need to handle damp and mould safely. Our work is aligned to the international standards of care (ANSI/IICRC S520, R520), the UK-specific guidance document BS PAS 64:2013, and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) Approved Code of Practice.

The UKCMS was created to protect public health as a result of its co-founder's own personal experience with water damage and mould illness.

What UKCMS is for

Indoor mould is a biological hazard. It is listed in the Health and Safety Executive's Approved List of Biological Agents and is addressed under COSHH. The standards of care for assessing, containing and remediating it have existed internationally for more than twenty years. The UK adopted them unevenly. Housing, insurance, social landlords and the trades that serve them have operated, in many cases, without a shared reference point.

UKCMS exists to close that gap. We translate the standards into UK context, publish guidance that a working contractor can follow, recognise competence where it exists, and make formal representations where regulation lags behind the evidence.

What UKCMS does

We publish Mould Essentials, a task-sheet library modelled on HSE's Asbestos Essentials, covering the work that contractors, housing staff and tradespeople actually do when mould is encountered or anticipated.
We maintain The Mould-Safe Code: five rules for safe mould work, and ten supporting principles of competent practice, anchored to the standards and regulations that give them force.
We curate a Technical Library that maps, in one place, the UK and international standards, regulations and public-health guidance a practitioner needs.
We publish Position Papers on technical questions where UKCMS has something to add — for example, on the limitations of CFU counts in mould assessment, or on the role of biocides in remediation decision-making.
We maintain a register of recognised competent persons across five defined levels, from Mould-Aware Individual through to Mould-Safe Investigator and Consultant.
We make formal representations to regulators and public-health bodies where guidance gaps affect health outcomes in UK buildings.

What UKCMS does not do

UKCMS is not a regulator.
It does not enforce law.
Its recognition is not a qualification, but we are making progress towards establishing a qualification.
It does not make health diagnoses; where health is discussed, readers are directed to their NHS or private medical practitioners or an occupational-health specialist. Regulation in this space is set by government and enforced by the HSE, local authorities and the Regulator of Social Housing.

Governance

UKCMS is managed by Indoor Air Aware Community Interest Company (company number 16821411). Indoor Air Aware was founded by Lisa Malyon to improve indoor air quality in UK homes and workplaces. The CIC structure binds any surplus to the social purpose; no private profit is extracted from UKCMS activity.

Technical direction is provided by Ryszard Jankowski, IICRC Triple Master (including Applied Microbial Remediation), with over twenty years of field and consultancy experience in fire, flood and insurance repair work in the UK. Ryszard is employed by The Restoration Academy UK Ltd, the IICRC-approved training school that delivers UKCMS's training programme. The Restoration Academy UK Ltd is managed by Adam Jankowski.

An Indoor Air Aware expert panel, drawn from health, buildings, mycology, ventilation, environmental health and law, advises on publications. Panel members are unpaid. Full panel composition is published at www.indoorairaware.co.uk.

Independence

UKCMS publishes commercial-relationship disclosures on every page where a commercial relationship could bear on content. Our training is delivered by The Restoration Academy UK Ltd, a commercial partner in which the Technical Director is employed and which is managed by the Technical Director's father. Our position papers are not sponsored. Our Mould Essentials guidance does not name commercial brands of cleaning chemical, vacuum, air scrubber or PPE. Where a piece of equipment must be specified, it is specified by performance standard (e.g. "H14 HEPA filtration to EN 1822").