Awaab’s Law Is Coming to the Private Rented Sector

Awaab’s Law is named after Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old who died in 2020 from prolonged exposure to mould in his family’s social housing. The inquiry into his death led to fixed, enforceable deadlines for social landlords to investigate and fix hazards, replacing the vague “reasonable time” standard housing law had relied on for decades.

What it requires today, in social housing

The deadlines now in force for social landlords are specific and unforgiving of delay:

• Emergency hazards, anything posing an immediate risk to health or safety, investigated and made safe within 24 hours of the landlord becoming aware
• Significant hazards, including damp, mould, excess cold and excess heat, investigated within 10 working days
• A written summary of findings to the tenant within a further 3 working days
• Safety works started within a further 5 working days of the investigation
• A 12-week backstop from the report date for more complex repairs

Our Awaab’s Law deadline calculator applies all of these to any report date.

Where the private sector stands now

The Renters’ Rights Act gives the Secretary of State the power to apply Awaab’s Law style duties to private tenancies, but that depends on secondary legislation not yet laid, and no confirmed start date has been published. So a private landlord today is not yet bound by the 24-hour and 10-working-day clock. The gap is narrower than it looks: existing law already expects landlords to act on serious hazards without unreasonable delay, and a Category 1 HHSRS hazard, which damp and mould easily become, already exposes you to council enforcement. Awaab’s Law does not invent the duty; it replaces “without unreasonable delay” with a number of days you cannot argue around.

Why landlords are adopting the timescales early

When the extension commences, it will most likely apply to reports going forward, not retrospectively. But a landlord with no process for logging report, investigation and repair dates has no way to demonstrate compliance from day one, whenever it arrives. Build the habit now, while nothing is attached to getting it wrong:

• Log the date every damp, mould or hazard report is received
• Record when you investigated and what you found
• Record when remedial works started and finished
• Treat the current social-housing timescales as your working target

How it connects to your HHSRS record

Awaab’s Law and HHSRS are not separate systems. A hazard serious enough to trigger an Awaab’s Law deadline is very likely a Category 1 or 2 HHSRS hazard, the framework councils already use. STEMHQ tracks hazards against HHSRS categories today, so the report and remediation dates a private-sector extension will require are largely the dates a well-run compliance record already captures.