Getting ready for Awaab’s Law: what landlords should be doing now

Awaab’s Law has changed the terms of the conversation about damp and mould. What was once managed through internal service standards is now framed by statutory timescales, and the burden sits with landlords to show not only that a hazard was put right, but that it was investigated, communicated and recorded inside a defined window.

The provisions, introduced through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 and given effect by secondary legislation, apply to social landlords in England. They set out how quickly a reported hazard must be investigated, when a written summary of the findings must reach the resident, and how quickly work must begin. Emergency hazards carry the shortest timescale of all. Phasing means damp and mould came first, with a wider set of hazards following.

Where most landlords are exposed

In our conversations with providers, the gap is rarely in intent. It is in traceability. A repair may well have been completed inside the required period, but the report was logged in a call handling system, the survey sat in an inspector’s inbox, and the letter to the resident was drafted from a template nobody can now locate. Under Awaab’s Law that chain is the compliance position. If it cannot be reconstructed, it cannot be evidenced.

Three weaknesses come up again and again:

• Trigger points are ambiguous. Staff are unclear on what counts as a report of a potential hazard, so the clock starts late, or does not start at all.
• Policies predate the legislation. Damp and mould policies written against the 2021 guidance still commit to “reasonable timescales” rather than statutory ones.
• Resident communication is informal. A phone call satisfies the resident but leaves nothing capable of evidencing the written summary requirement.

What to work through this quarter

Start by reading your current damp and mould policy against the wording of the regulations rather than against the guidance you used last time. Identify every point where the document commits to a timescale and check it against the statutory one. Where your policy is silent, it is not neutral — it is a gap.

Next, map the journey a report actually takes through your organisation, from first contact to sign-off, and mark every point where a timestamp is created. Any step without one is a step you cannot evidence. Most providers find at least one, and it is usually the handover between the contact centre and the surveyor.

Then look at your templates. A written summary of an investigation has to say what was found, what will be done and when it will happen. A generic “we attended and no further action is required” letter will not stand up to scrutiny, and it will not stand up to a resident who complains.

Finally, treat this as a board-level assurance question rather than an operational one. The consumer standards expect landlords to understand and evidence their own compliance position, and members should be able to see that position without commissioning a special exercise to produce it.

None of this is beyond any competent housing team. What it takes is time — the unglamorous work of comparing documents against legislation, clause by clause, and being honest about what is missing. That is exactly the kind of review HousingAI is built for: it can read your existing policy against the current legislative wording, flag where the timescales diverge and draft the revisions in your own language. It will not make the decision for you, but it will tell you quickly where you stand, and give you the evidence trail to show how you got there.