Awaab’s Law Phase 2: what changes on 30 November 2026

Three things, in order. The Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025 were made in September 2025 and came into force on 27 October 2025, covering damp and mould as a significant hazard and every prescribed hazard except overcrowding as an emergency hazard. Then, on 23 June 2026, the schedule of hazards in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005 was renumbered, which matters because Phase 2 defines its scope by pointing at paragraph numbers in that schedule. Then, on 13 July 2026, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published the regulations as they will read from 30 November 2026, with Phase 2 guidance and a hazard triage annex beside them.

The commencement is by the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026. The 30 November date is the one the Ministry has published for them, and it is the date the sector is planning to.

NotePhase 3, extending the regime to the remaining HHSRS hazards other than overcrowding, has been announced for 2027. No instrument has been laid, so there is no date to plan to yet.

Phase 1 already covered every emergency hazard, whatever its type. What Phase 2 widens is the list of significant hazards, the ones on the 10, 3 and 5 working-day clocks.

Nine categories, defined by cross-reference to the renumbered Schedule 1 of the HHSRS Regulations. The Ministry’s triage annex groups them as eight, with the three kinds of fall together.

In practice this is most of a repairs desk. A boiler failure in January is excess cold. A loose stair nosing is a fall on stairs. A failed consumer unit is an electrical hazard. From 30 November each of those, where it presents a significant risk of harm, is on a statutory clock rather than a repairs policy.

From 30 November 2026 a winter heating failure in a social home in England is a significant hazard with a ten-working-day investigation clock.

The Phase 1 regulations defined a significant risk of harm as one a reasonable landlord with the relevant knowledge would take steps to make safe as a matter of urgency, but not within 24 hours. Phase 2 replaces “as a matter of urgency” with “within 15 working days”. It is the same test with a number on it, and the number is the sum of the two operative clocks: ten working days to investigate and five to make safe.

It is a triage threshold, not a fourth deadline. Regulation 3 imposes no duty of its own; it decides which bucket a hazard falls in, and the duties then come from the regulations that attach to that bucket. A landlord that treats fifteen working days as a deadline to be measured against has invented one the regulations do not contain, and one that ignores the number has lost the clearest guidance it will get on where the line between significant and routine sits.

NoteThe reasonable-landlord test is informed by relevant knowledge of the occupier: an asthmatic child in the home changes the answer. That is a judgement a person makes and records, and no system can make it for them.

Phase 2 introduces an excluded fire hazard: a fire hazard arising from a deficiency in a part of a building that is regulated by the Fire Safety Order and contains two or more sets of domestic premises. The Ministry’s annex puts it plainly: Awaab’s Law does not apply to fire hazards in the common parts of blocks of flats, damaged or missing fire doors and compartmentation issues included, unless they are within the flat.

• The exclusion sits in the definition of a relevant hazard, so it applies to the 24-hour emergency duty as well as the significant-hazard clocks.
• A fire hazard inside the home, a faulty cooker or an overloaded socket, is in scope as before.
• Cladding work was never relevant safety work under either phase, and stays outside the clocks.
• Hazards from overcrowding stay outside the regime at every phase.

The common-parts carve-out does not make those hazards anybody’s lesser duty. They are the responsible person’s duty under the Fire Safety Order, with its own enforcement; what they are not is an implied term of the tenancy with a county-court clock on it.

The English regulations apply to lessors of social homes in England: councils and housing associations, under leases covered by section 10A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. They extend to England and Wales as an instrument and apply in England. The private rented sector in England is not covered by them.

Scotland is doing its own version, and doing it seven weeks earlier. The Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026 come into force on 6 October 2026. A landlord in Scotland who is told, or otherwise becomes aware, that a house may be affected by damp or mould must have a competent person complete an investigation within 10 working days, give the tenant a written summary within 3 working days of it ending, and start any relevant safety work within 5 working days of it ending.

• It reaches private residential tenancies as well as Scottish secure tenancies, through a new duty in section 14 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 and a new regulation 8A in the Right to Repair Regulations 2002.
• A working day in Scotland excludes Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays in Scotland, which is a different list from England’s. 2 January is a working day in Manchester and a holiday in Glasgow.
• For social tenants, a missed investigation or start date carries compensation of £15 plus £3 for each working day late, capped at £100 under each head, and substantial damp or mould becomes a qualifying repair with a maximum completion period of 20 working days.
• It is damp and mould only. There is no Scottish equivalent of the Phase 2 list.

NoteNeither instrument reaches Wales or Northern Ireland. A Welsh housing association answers to the Renting Homes fitness standard; a Northern Ireland one to its own housing law.

1. 01Map the repair categories to the hazard categories. A repairs desk has a vocabulary written years ago. Every category that could be excess cold, a fall, an electrical hazard or the rest needs to know which Schedule 1 paragraph it is, because the clock attaches to the paragraph and not to the repair code.
2. 02Widen the awareness routes. The clock runs from the day the landlord became aware, and awareness includes a stock condition survey, a gas engineer’s visit, an environmental health referral and a neighbour. If an operative can see a hazard and has no way to report it into the system, the clock is running on hazards nobody is counting.
3. 03Count working days against the right calendar. Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas Day, Good Friday and bank holidays in England and Wales are excluded. Ten working days is at least fourteen calendar days, and more in a week with a bank holiday in it, so a calendar-day target and the statutory one are different dates.
4. 04Write the summary template now. The written summary within three working days has to say whether a hazard was found, what it is, what work is needed and when, and how to contact the landlord. An acknowledgement does not satisfy it.
5. 05Tell the contractors the anchor. A works order for relevant safety work is due five working days after the investigation was completed, not five working days after the order was raised. A contractor who does not know the investigation date does not know the deadline.
6. 06Decide who classifies. Whether a hazard is significant, emergency or neither is a reasonable-landlord judgement informed by the occupier’s circumstances. It is made by a person, recorded with their name, and never made by the software.

An Awaab’s Law case, separate from the repair ticket, because a statutory clock is not a contractual SLA and the two are kept side by side so a housing officer can see which of them they are about to miss. The case holds the date and the source of awareness, the classification a named person made, the investigation and its completion date, the written summary and when it was given, the safety work and its completion, the supplementary work and its start, and a rehousing record where the home could not be made safe in time.

Every deadline is computed from those facts in working days against a shipped England and Wales bank holiday table, anchored where the regulation anchors it: awareness for the investigation, the investigation’s completion for the summary and the safety work, the day after that completion for the twelve-week backstop on supplementary work. None of them is typed in. All ten hazard categories are on the record already, each carrying the date from which it counts as a significant hazard, and a hazard the landlord knew about before the relevant time is anchored on the day it was next reported, as regulation 21 provides.

What it does not do is decide. There is no score, no rating and no compliant flag. A deadline that passes is recorded with the date it passed and stays on the record after the case closes, because that record is the landlord’s own evidence of what happened and when. Whether the landlord complied is a question for the county court on the implied covenant, and the defence in section 10A, that the lessor used all reasonable endeavours, turns on evidence Estimark does not hold. Estimark holds the record, not the verdict.

The Reactive Maintenance bolt-on runs the repair itself on a priority SLA measured from the report. Property Compliance tracks the landlord Big Six per property. Both are quoted to the stock you look after. See reactive maintenance in Estimark and Estimark for housing associations.