By Rob Gershon, HQN associate

There’s a lot of information available on the legal and technical aspects of Awaab’s Law. The government released its comprehensive Draft Guidance for Landlords back in June of this and the perennially reliable Giles Peaker took time out of his holiday to summarise the release and address the likely concerns and approaches of some landlords and potential ‘claim farmers’ in response to it.

The slightly convoluted inception of Awaab’s Law was one of the reasons I decided, finally, to start my own housing blog back in 2022. I’ll resist linking to my own posts but having re-read what I wrote in a piece I titled ‘Culture of complacency’ I’m not sure I feel all that much more confident in the government’s ability to hold landlords accountable for their responsibilities today, just a month before the first tranche of Awaab’s Law is due to come into effect.

It seems sensible for the government to isolate the particular issue of damp and mould as a focus for the first part of Awaab’s Law, after the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak was attributed to the damp and mould in the family home that their landlord had chosen not to address. In the Draft Guidance link above, the government makes clear that damp and mould will be subject to the new legislation from October 2025, and other hazards will be brought into legislation through 2026 and 2027, including on fire and electrical safety, excess cold and heat, and eventually the entire list of issues in the HHSRS (Housing Health and Safety Rating System), with the exception of overcrowding, which will be allowed to continue to negatively affect people’s health and safety.

The government is set to investigate the implementation of Awaab’s Law beyond social housing, into the private rented sector and perhaps even temporary accommodation, but initially the law will apply to social landlords. It seems almost inconceivable that a law is necessary to ensure that social landlords aren’t renting out properties that can harm and kill their inhabitants, but it’s clear from the sector’s response to Awaab’s Law itself, the Regulation of Social Housing Act that has made space for it, and even recent Decent Homes Standard responses that sector trade bodies are reluctant to provide funds to keep ‘their’ homes in a good or decent condition.

It’s almost exactly four years, too, since the Housing Ombudsman released its first ever Spotlight report on damp and mould, to coincide with acute national media interest, starting with Daniel Hewitt’s in-depth ITV investigations, in the squalid conditions in which far too many tenants are forced to live. Set apart from the damp and mould itself was the critical subtitle of this report, ‘It’s not lifestyle’.

For far too long tenants have been blamed for damp and mould for a range of reasons that all share one important characteristic: they are not the reason for the damp and mould. Even since the publication and its implications for the ways landlords treat tenants, there have been numerous other ombudsman spotlight reports, media pieces and campaigns focussed on the fact that behaviour within the sector hasn’t changed enough to reflect this.

So, a law is necessary to force landlords not to keep the homes of which they are caretakers in a squalid condition.

The aims of Awaab’s Law with regard to damp and mould are very clear. The guidance makes it clear what’s expected of landlords:

• Investigate any potential emergency hazards and, if the investigation confirms emergency hazards, undertake relevant safety work as soon as reasonably practicable, both within 24 hours of becoming aware of them
• Investigate any potential significant hazards within 10 working daysof becoming aware of them
• Produce a written summary of investigation findings and provide this to the named tenant within three working daysof the conclusion of the investigation
• Undertake relevant safety work within five working daysof the investigation concluding, if the investigation identifies a significant hazard
• Begin, or take steps to begin, any further required works within five working daysof the investigation concluding, if the investigation identifies a significant or emergency hazard. If steps cannot be taken to begin work in five working days this must be done as soon as possible, and work must be physically started within 12 weeks
• Satisfactorily complete works within a reasonable time period
• Secure the provision of suitable alternative accommodation for the household, at the social landlord’s expense, if relevant safety work cannot be completed within specified timeframes
• Keep the named tenant updated throughout the process and provide information on how to keep safe.

This all seems pretty clear, right? So, why might tenants feel a degree of uncertainty about whether these aims can be met, and how can they convey their valid concerns to landlords and to government?

Firstly, the above timeframes leave a bit too much leeway for interpretation by landlords of how swiftly damp and mould problems should be rectified: “satisfactorily complete work within a reasonable time period” is hardly a resounding call to action to resolve issues as quickly as possible. While government is often loath to intervene directly in what ‘independent’ social landlords can and cannot do, giving landlords the final decision on what is ‘reasonable’ for further delays to the work presents big potential problems for tenants.

For many tenants who have tried to get their landlords to resolve damp and mould issues, even since 2021’s ombudsman focus, all the issues in this draft guidance are still an enormous problem, for which legislation seems a clumsy solution. Keeping tenants updated throughout the process of repairs is still a pipedream for many, despite the alleged focus of 2024’s Regulation of Social Housing Act being a ‘new deal’ for tenants. Many residents will be lucky to get acknowledgment they’ve raised a damp and mould issue – or complaint – within five days, let alone see works completed or a plan for how the work will be resolved.

The mention of the Regulation of Social Housing Act brings other concerns, too. At last year’s Residents’ Network Annual Conference, there were distinctly different views from residents as separate from those speakers from government departments and landlord reps. One of the core themes that’s important for residents is accountability. There’s been a disquiet among tenants that although the regulator has a new remit and new powers, it’s not using these to redress the power imbalance that remains with landlords.

Since that conference, the regulator has found several landlords in breach of their obligations under the new consumer standards, but the actions the regulator has taken have only been to suggest performance improvement plans. These are usually not visible in public or to tenants at all, and with the repeated cases emanating from the same repeat offenders raised in successive ombudsman Spotlight reports, it’s hard to tell whether any lessons are being learned from the kind of failures that have made Awaab’s Law a necessity.

For those of us who have campaigned and worked towards a better regulatory system for accountability, the lack of anybody being held accountable for entirely avoidable failures feels like it should raise some red flags now, and is something we’re going to have to stay focussed on as Awaab’s Law moves from being a proposed solution into legislation whose actual outcomes are still far from clear.