Awaab’s Law: what landlords need to know
Awaab’s Law changes the nature of a repair obligation. For decades the standard was that a landlord must carry out repairs within a “reasonable time” — a phrase that could only ever be tested after the event, usually in a dispute. Awaab’s Law replaces that, for the hazards it covers, with fixed clocks measured in hours and working days from the moment a landlord becomes aware of a potential hazard.
It is named after Awaab Ishak, the two-year-old who died in December 2020 after prolonged exposure to mould in his family’s social housing flat in Rochdale. The coroner’s conclusion in November 2022 — that the death was caused by prolonged exposure to mould in the home, in a property where the family had repeatedly raised the problem — drove the legislation that followed.
Right now the duties bind social landlords, not private ones. But a government consultation on extending Awaab’s Law to private rented tenancies opened on 9 October 2026 and closes on 18 December 2026, and it proposes coverage of nearly all of the hazards in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. If you let property privately, the question is no longer whether this reaches you but how ready you are when it does.
Where the law sits today
Awaab’s Law comes from the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which inserted a new implied term into social housing tenancy agreements: the landlord must comply with prescribed requirements about investigating and remedying prescribed hazards, within prescribed timescales. The detail — which hazards, which timescales — sits in regulations, and those regulations are being commenced in phases.
Because it operates as an implied term of the tenancy, a breach is enforceable by the tenant as a contractual claim in the courts, in addition to anything the social housing regulator or a council does. That is a meaningful difference from a purely regulatory duty.
Phase 1: in force from 27 October 2025
Phase 1 covers two things: emergency hazards of any kind, and damp and mould that presents a significant risk to health or safety.
Emergency hazards — 24 hours
Where a landlord becomes aware of a potential emergency hazard — one presenting an imminent and significant risk of harm — it must investigate and make the property safe within 24 hours. Both halves matter: it is not enough to attend within 24 hours and book the work for next week. The hazard has to be made safe, or the risk otherwise removed, inside the day.
Significant damp and mould — 10 working days to begin investigating
Where a landlord becomes aware of potential damp or mould that could present a significant risk, it must begin an investigation within 10 working days. The regulations then set out what follows: a written summary of the findings must be provided to the tenant shortly after the investigation concludes, and where a significant hazard is confirmed, remedial work must begin and be completed within the timescales the regulations prescribe. Because those downstream timescales are prescribed precisely, read them from the regulations themselves rather than from any summary — including this one.
If it cannot be made safe
Where a landlord cannot make the property safe within the relevant timescale, the framework requires suitable alternative accommodation to be offered to the household, at the landlord’s expense, until the home is safe to return to. That provision is what gives the timescales their teeth, and it is the part private landlords should think hardest about, because it is an obligation with no cost cap built into the planning.
Phase 2: from 30 November 2026
Phase 2 extends the duties beyond damp and mould to a wider set of hazards, so the fixed investigation and remedy clocks will apply to a much broader range of property conditions. The two-stage structure — a 24-hour duty for emergencies and defined timescales for investigating and remedying significant hazards — carries across; what changes is the scope.
Government has set out a phased approach with further expansion to follow. Rather than plan around a list that is still being extended, the sensible assumption for anyone running a portfolio is that eventually something close to the full HHSRS hazard list is in scope, and to build a process that can handle any hazard type rather than a damp-and-mould workflow bolted on the side.
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 27 October 2025 | Phase 1 in force for social landlords: 24 hours to investigate and make safe emergency hazards; 10 working days to begin investigating significant damp and mould |
| 30 November 2026 | Phase 2 extends the duties to a wider set of hazards |
| 9 October 2026 | Government consultation opens on extending Awaab’s Law to private rented tenancies, proposing coverage of nearly all HHSRS hazards |
| 18 December 2026 | That consultation closes |
The private rented sector consultation
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, provides the legislative route for applying Awaab’s Law to private rented tenancies. The consultation that opened on 9 October 2026 and closes on 18 December 2026 sets out how that would work, and proposes that it cover nearly all of the HHSRS hazards rather than a narrow subset.
Two implications are worth drawing out now, while the detail is still being settled:
- Scope, not just speed. A duty covering nearly all HHSRS hazards means the clocks could be started by a report about excess cold, a defective staircase, a failed extractor fan or an electrical fault — not only by visible mould. A triage process that only recognises damp is not going to be adequate.
- Awareness is the trigger. The clock starts when the landlord becomes aware of a potential hazard. How you receive, timestamp and route reports becomes a compliance control in its own right — and informal channels (a text to a part-time handyman, a verbal mention at a viewing) become a liability, because they start the clock without starting the process.
If you have views on how this should work for private lets, the consultation is the place to put them. Landlord bodies will submit responses, but individual responses from people who actually manage stock carry weight on points of practicality.
What private landlords should do now
None of the following requires the law to change first. All of it reduces risk under the obligations that already exist — the HHSRS, section 11 repairing obligations, and the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, under which a tenant can already sue directly over an unfit property.
- Create one logged channel for tenant reports. Email, portal or phone line — but one, and every report timestamped on receipt. If you cannot evidence when you became aware, you cannot evidence that you responded in time.
- Write down your triage categories. Define what counts as an emergency for your stock, with examples, and what counts as a significant hazard. Make it specific enough that whoever answers the phone on a Friday afternoon can apply it without calling you.
- Test whether you can actually respond in 24 hours. Do you have a contractor who will attend out of hours? Do you have access arrangements? Do you have authority to spend without a conversation? Run the scenario before you have to live it.
- Get the contractor arrangements in writing. Response-time commitments, out-of-hours cover and escalation routes, agreed in advance. A verbal arrangement with a plumber who is on holiday is not a process.
- Investigate properly and record it. Photographs, moisture readings where relevant, the rooms affected, the suspected cause, and the date. An investigation that produces no record is, for evidential purposes, no investigation.
- Write to the tenant. Confirm what you found, what you are going to do and when. Build two or three standard templates so this is routine rather than a drafting exercise each time.
- Fix causes, not symptoms. Mould-washing a wall and repainting it without addressing ventilation, insulation, heating or a leak is the single behaviour that made Awaab’s Law necessary. It also guarantees a repeat report, which is the worst possible evidential position.
- Think about decant now. Know what suitable alternative accommodation would cost and where you would find it, and check whether your insurance contributes. Deciding that at the point of crisis is how landlords end up paying hotel rates for weeks.
- Review your agency agreement. If a managing agent receives the reports, your compliance position depends on their process. Ask to see it, ask what their out-of-hours cover is, and get the reporting obligation written into the management agreement.
- Go looking in your damp-prone stock. Solid-wall properties, basement and ground-floor flats, single-aspect units, properties with disconnected extract fans, and anything rated EPC E or below. A hazard you find on a planned inspection is a repair; the same hazard reported by a tenant is a clock.
Why this is already a live risk, not a 2027 problem
Even before any extension to private lets, response times to tenant reports of damp and mould are now the lens through which councils, tribunals and courts look at these cases. A council assessing a damp and mould hazard will ask when it was reported and what happened next. A tenant bringing a fitness for habitation claim will produce the message history. And from late 2026 the private rented sector database introduced by the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 begins rolling out, which makes compliance records considerably more visible than they have been.
The landlords for whom Awaab’s Law will be a non-event are the ones who already log reports, triage them against defined hazard categories, investigate with evidence, and close actions out on a record. That is a process change, and it is cheaper to make it now than under a statutory deadline.
Build the evidence trail before the clock starts
Hybrid Comply timestamps tenant-reported issues, scores them against HHSRS hazard categories, tracks corrective actions to completion with photographic evidence, and produces the dated report that proves what you did and when. Book a demo and we will show you the damp and mould workflow end to end.
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