Awaab’s Law Phase 2 starts on 30 November 2026
Awaab’s Law came into force for social landlords in England on 27 October 2025. That first phase covered emergency hazards and damp and mould. On 30 November 2026 the second phase begins, and the list of hazards it applies to gets considerably longer.
What Phase 2 adds
From 30 November 2026 the same duties extend beyond damp and mould to cover:
- Excess cold and excess heat
- Structural collapse and falling elements
- Electrical hazards
- Domestic hygiene hazards
A third phase will eventually pick up the remaining hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, with overcrowding excluded. No date has been set for that yet.
The timescales you are working to
The duties are defined in working days, and the clock starts when the landlord becomes aware of a potential hazard, not when it is convenient to look at it.
- Emergency hazards – investigate and make safe within 24 hours
- Significant hazards – investigate within 10 working days
- Written summary to the tenant – within 3 working days of the investigation finishing
- Safety work – begin within 5 working days of the investigation
- Further preventative work – started within 5 working days, or completed within 12 weeks where that is not practical
Does this apply to private landlords?
Not yet. As things stand Awaab’s Law applies to the social rented sector only. Under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 the intention is to extend it to the private rented sector from 2027, and the Decent Homes Standard is currently expected to apply across both sectors from 2035.
So a private landlord or a letting agent has roughly a year before this becomes their problem directly. That is worth using rather than waiting for, because the hard part is not the repair.
The hard part is proving it
Every duty above is a duty with a date attached. Investigate within ten working days. Write to the tenant within three. Begin work within five. If a complaint reaches the Housing Ombudsman, or eventually the Private Rented Sector Ombudsman, the question will not be whether you sorted the damp. It will be whether you can show when the tenant told you, when somebody attended, what they found, what you wrote back, and when the work was done.
Most letting agents cannot produce that from a phone call log and a WhatsApp thread. A tenant reporting a problem by text, an agent ringing round for a trade, and a job completed with no record beyond an invoice is a perfectly normal way to run repairs, and it leaves you with nothing to show.
What answers Awaab’s Law is a timestamped chain: report, investigation, written response, work, completion, each one dated and each one held somewhere neither party can quietly edit afterwards.
What to do between now and next year
Start recording repairs properly on the properties you manage. Not because Phase 2 catches you on 30 November, but because when the private sector duties arrive in 2027 you will need a year of habit behind you, not a year of catching up.
See how InAJam handles repairs and compliance for landlords and agents