On 13th July 2026, the government announced that Awaab's Law Phase 2 would come into force on 30th
November 2026, alongside guidance documents outlining what this second phase will look like in practice.
In this blog, Jordan Brown, Head of Consultancy - Assets and Compliance at Pennington Choices, shares his expert insights into the updated guidance, how the legislation will expand to a wider range of HHSRS hazards, and how you can prepare now for November.
To hear further expert insights from Jordan on what the updated guidance means and have your questions answered live, register for our next free live webinar, 'Awaab's Law Phase 2: What to Expect', on Wednesday 19th August at 12pm.
Having spent a good chunk of the last nine months discussing, debating, and occasionally arguing about the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025, also known as Awaab’s Law, one of my biggest takeaways from the updated Phase 2 guidance is that we are finally starting to get the clarity the sector has been asking for.
One point I wanted to start off with before I get into the detail of the updated guidance is that it remains incredibly important to remember that Awaab’s Law does not create new repairing obligations. I still hear people talk about Awaab’s Law as though it introduces a brand-new repair standard; it does not. The underlying repairing responsibilities have existed for years.
What Awaab’s Law does is establish clear expectations around urgency, escalation, communication, and timescales when dealing with emergency and significant hazards. It provides a much clearer picture of what “reasonable” looks like when emergency or significant hazards are identified, while reinforcing the need to take account of household vulnerabilities and individual circumstances. It also places a much greater emphasis on keeping tenants informed throughout the process.
The updated guidance is noticeably more detailed, more specific and, in places, significantly more prescriptive than earlier versions; this is not a bad thing. One of the challenges since Phase 1 came into force has been the amount of interpretation required by landlords trying to translate broad principles into operational processes. The latest guidance does much more of that heavy lifting for us.
I am particularly pleased to see the publication of the accompanying hazard triage guidance. For months, organisations across the sector have been trying to answer the same question: “How serious is serious enough?” (I’ve been calling it the line in the sand). The new document will not eliminate every debate, but it does provide a much stronger framework for assessing hazards consistently and making defensible decisions.
Now, to be clear, I do not necessarily agree with every example in the triage guidance. Based on my own experience as a surveyor and consultant working with landlords, there are a few scenarios where I might have categorised the risk differently or at least expected a more nuanced discussion. I suspect many readers will have the same reaction. However, personal views aside, consistency has been one of the biggest missing pieces since Phase 1 was introduced. Having a national reference point is undoubtedly better than hundreds of landlords all reaching different conclusions about similar repairs.
It is also encouraging to see that the government appears to be taking a genuine test-and-learn approach. The updated guidance reflects lessons from Phase 1 and, perhaps more importantly, feels like preparation for the future expansion of Awaab’s Law. It is not perfect, and there will undoubtedly be scenarios that are not explicitly covered, but it is a significant step towards providing landlords with the practical direction they need.
For some time, I have described Phase 1 as feeling like something of a pilot for the sector. Legally, of course, it was not a pilot. But operationally, many landlords treated it as the first real test of how Awaab’s Law would work in practice; Phase 2 feels different. It is not simply an expansion of the list of hazards. It represents a fundamental shift in how repairs services need to operate.
If landlords continue to treat Awaab’s Law repairs as a separate category managed by a specialist team, there is a real risk of creating a two-tier repairs service. One service operating to prescribed timescales and enhanced communication requirements, and another operating to more traditional repairs processes. This would be a problem for both tenants in the first instance but also becomes increasingly challenging and time-consuming internally when assessing repairs.
The updated guidance itself points landlords towards preparing for future expansion, rather than simply reacting to the hazards currently in scope. So, my unpopular opinion would be, stop looking at Awaab’s Law in phases and look to see how you shift your entire repairs offering over to align with the requirements of Awaab’s Law.
Awaab’s Law cannot be viewed solely as a repairs issue, and it certainly is not just an asset management issue. It reaches into customer services, housing management, complaints, safeguarding, communications, contractor management, data quality, governance, procurement, development, and leadership.
The most successful organisations will be those that recognise this as not a compliance project, but an organisation-wide change programme that requires a fundamental shift in how services are delivered.
If I had to choose one paragraph from the updated guidance that every landlord should print out, stick to the wall, and revisit regularly, it would be this:
“The application of Awaab’s Law will be fact specific and therefore social landlords will need to make their own judgement as to what Awaab’s Law requires in any particular case, with reference to the Regulations themselves. Social landlords must apply judgment where necessary and should create internal policies with the right governance and oversight to ensure they are applied and fit for purpose, in order to ensure compliance with Awaab’s Law.” - Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025 (Awaab’s Law)
For all the additional detail, examples, and clarification included within the updated guidance, the government is clear that there is no substitute for professional judgement as every repair is different.
A leaking roof in one property is not necessarily the same as a leaking roof in another. The age of the building, the construction type, the materials used, the location of the defect, the likely consequences if left unresolved, and the wider condition of the property all matter. Most importantly, the people living in the property matter.
The same defect may present a very different level of risk depending on who occupies the home. A repair that may be inconvenient for one household could represent a significant hazard for another because of age, disability, health conditions, or other vulnerabilities. This principle runs throughout both the main guidance and the supporting triage guidance and is the reason Awaab’s Law cannot be reduced to a simple flowchart.
Despite this, I am absolutely not suggesting that landlords should not have decision trees, triage matrices, or scripted questioning; these are essential.
The strongest organisations will have robust front-end tools that help staff quickly identify potential hazards, gather the right information, and ensure concerns are escalated appropriately. The triage guidance will be particularly useful in helping organisations build that consistency. However, those frameworks should be the start of the conversation, not the end of it.
Frontline colleagues need clear escalation routes when a case does not fit neatly into a predefined category. They also need the confidence and authority to understand when each situation is different and seek further assessment when the circumstances justify it. In my experience, this is where organisations either succeed or struggle.
A matrix can help people make good decisions; a matrix cannot make decisions for people.
Perhaps the biggest lesson emerging from Phase 1, and reinforced again in Phase 2, is that organisations need a strong understanding of Awaab’s Law across all frontline services. Staff need to understand what hazards look like, what questions to ask, when vulnerabilities change the risk profile, and how concerns should be escalated quickly and accurately.
It is also important to accept that landlords will sometimes get it wrong. That might sound uncomfortable in a compliance-focused world, but Awaab’s Law is fundamentally different to something like gas servicing. There is no simple yes-or-no test that can be applied in every circumstance. Much of the decision making is based on evidence, risk assessment, and professional judgement.
We have to be smart and recognise that the goal is to make reasonable, defensible decisions using the information available at the time, while ensuring residents are not exposed to unnecessary risk and that potential hazards are addressed promptly.
The most mature organisations will not be the ones that never make mistakes. They will be the ones that identify mistakes quickly, learn from them, and continuously improve their approach.
If something was escalated unnecessarily, learn from it. If something should have been escalated but was not, learn from that too because one of the biggest misconceptions about the implementation of Awaab’s Law is that there is a finish line somewhere in the distance, yet this is not the case. This is not a project that ends; it is continuous improvement, and it will remain continuous improvement long after future phases arrive.
The Phase 2 guidance does not fundamentally change the existing timeframes. Instead, the focus is on providing greater clarity around how landlords assess hazards, make decisions, and demonstrate compliance with their obligations.
The guidance is also far more specific around the need to capture, retain, and evidence decision making, communication, access attempts, and actions taken. That is important from a governance perspective, but it becomes absolutely critical when a landlord needs to demonstrate that it has taken reasonable steps to investigate a hazard, gain access to a property, or complete required works.
For many organisations, compliance will depend just as much on the quality of their records as the quality of their repairs service. A landlord may do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons, but if they cannot evidence that decision months later, they could find themselves in a very difficult position. Or to put it more bluntly: if it is not recorded, it did not happen.
One section I was particularly pleased to see relates to new build homes and warranty arrangements. As a career long housing professional working in repairs and maintenance, the subject of warranties and timeframes around these was always something that caused me no end of issues.
However, the good news is that the guidance makes it clear that the existence of a warranty does not remove a landlord’s obligations under Awaab’s Law. Put simply, the resident’s legal protections do not stop at the point a landlord passes responsibility to a developer, contractor, or warranty provider. This might sound obvious, but it has significant implications for how organisations operate.
If a defect covered by a warranty creates an emergency or significant hazard, the landlord remains responsible for complying with the requirements and timescales set out under Awaab’s Law. The fact that another organisation may ultimately carry out or fund the remedial work does not alter the landlord’s obligations to the tenant.
For me, this reinforces the wider point that Awaab’s Law is not a repairs challenge, and it is not an asset management challenge, it is an organisational challenge. Development teams, procurement teams, Contract management teams, Housing teams, Support Teams, Income Teams, ASB Teams, and others all need to understand it and understand their role or how their role impacts you as an organisation being compliant.
If landlords are procuring development contracts, warranty arrangements, or defect management services, they should be thinking carefully about whether those agreements support compliance with Awaab’s Law timescales and expectations. Otherwise, there is a risk that contractual arrangements pull one way while statutory obligations pull another.
Another welcome area of clarity relates to tenant behaviour.
Although it feels slightly depressing to still be discussing this in 2026, the guidance is very clear that everyday activities such as cooking, bathing, washing clothes, and drying laundry are unavoidable parts of normal occupation and are unlikely to constitute a breach of tenancy by the resident. This has been clear under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) since it became enacted in 2006, but it’s nice to see this reinforced within this guidance.
This matters because the conversation around damp, mould, and condensation has historically become overly focused on occupant behaviour. Of course, how a property is used can be relevant. However, the guidance reinforces what many housing professionals have been saying for years: people are expected to live in their homes as they need to cook, wash, dry clothes, and bathe their children.
The existence of moisture-generating activities should not come as a surprise to landlords because these are exactly the activities homes are designed to accommodate.
One thing that stands out throughout the updated guidance is the extent to which communication is woven into the requirements.
In the early conversations around Awaab’s Law, many organisations understandably focused on repairs timescales. Yet the guidance dedicates significant attention to communication, updates, written summaries, and ensuring residents understand their rights. That is important because compliance is not simply about carrying out repairs quickly.
Residents need to know what is happening. They need to understand decisions that have been made and they need to be kept informed when circumstances change. The guidance also sets out that residents need to understand their rights and what they can expect from their landlord.
The dedicated communication section is a recognition that poor communication is often at the heart of tenant dissatisfaction, even when repairs are ultimately completed.
The inclusion of a written summary template is also useful. It gives landlords a practical reference point to check whether existing letters, emails, or system-generated updates are capturing and providing the level of information expected under the regulations.
Sometimes compliance is not about doing something completely different, but about checking that what you are already doing stands up against the expectations now set out more clearly in the guidance.
One of the most useful parts of the guidance is not actually new. The principle existed long before Awaab’s Law and certainly before Phase 2, however, it is helpful to see it clearly articulated.
The guidance recognises that landlords may become aware of potential hazards through a wide range of interactions, including routine inspections and visits carried out by non-technical staff such as housing officers, caretakers, scheme managers, income officers, support workers, etc.
This ties in to my earlier points and is a good reminder that compliance cannot sit solely within a repairs department. Any one of the roles could be the first person to identify indicators of a significant or emergency hazard and remembering that staff do not need to be surveyors to spot an issue.
To be clear, there is no expectations that a non-technical employee needs to diagnose something like a structural defect or write a specification for remedial works. But what they do need is enough awareness to recognise when something may be wrong, understand what information should be captured, and know how to get that information quickly to somebody who can assess the risk.
In many organisations, that frontline awareness could be just as important as the quality of the repairs service itself. The example prompt questions included in the guidance are helpful in this respect. They are not exhaustive, and the guidance is clear about that, but they provide a useful benchmark for landlords to review whether the questions they are currently asking to align with the revised expectations.
Another passage that caught my attention was the section discussing external contractors:
“In some circumstances a landlord might be considered to become aware of a hazard when a third party employed by them (for example a contractor) becomes aware of it. Whether the landlord ‘becomes aware’ at this point, or instead when the contractor reports the issue, is likely to depend on whether the contractor is, legally, acting as an agent of the landlord.”
This feels entirely consistent with principles that have existed for a long time.
In practical terms, my experience suggests that if a contractor encounters something obvious, something they would reasonably be expected to identify while carrying out the work they were instructed to undertake, landlords should be cautious about assuming they can rely on the date the issue was eventually reported back to determine when awareness began.
The legal nuances on when the landlord became aware of the issue may vary between circumstances, but the operational solution is quite simple:
The objective should not be to debate when awareness technically begins. The objective should be ensuring hazards are identified and reported as quickly as possible.
The same point applies to the use of contractors more generally. The guidance is clear that, while landlords may use contractors to undertake investigations, inspections, or remedial works, the legal responsibility for compliance remains with the landlord. That includes ensuring contractors understand tenant circumstances, communicate appropriately, and deliver services in a way that supports compliance with Awaab’s Law.
For years, the housing sector has outsourced elements of service delivery. There is nothing unusual about that. What landlords cannot outsource, however, is accountability.
If a contractor misses a timescale, treats a resident poorly, fails to appreciate a household vulnerability or does not appropriately escalate concerns, it is unlikely to be much comfort to a landlord that the failure sat within a third-party contract rather than within their own organisation.
We need to remember that the resident’s relationship is with the landlord. The Regulator of Social Housing's interest is in the landlord, and ultimately, the legal obligations remain with the landlord.
One element that I found particularly interesting appears towards the end of the guidance within the section covering pre-court action:
“If the landlord does become aware of a potential hazard upon receipt of a formal ‘letter of claim’, this point shall be treated as ‘Day Zero’ for the purposes of Awaab’s Law timeframes, which should be followed as usual.”
For anyone who has worked within housing disrepair, particularly cases where landlords have experienced difficulties obtaining access, this is a fascinating clarification.
My practical advice would be not to view a letter of claim as something separate from the hazard itself. Treat it in exactly the same way as any other notification that potentially brings a hazard to your attention:
Of course, landlords also need to be mindful that the Pre-Action Protocol for Housing Conditions Claims (England) continues to operate alongside these requirements. The challenge is that the timescales within the Protocol do not neatly align with the timescales introduced through Awaab’s Law. As a result, organisations need to ensure that legal processes do not inadvertently delay action where a potential emergency or significant hazard exists.
There is also an important mindset shift here. By the time a formal letter of claim arrives, the tenant is effectively alleging that something has already gone wrong. Either they believe the landlord has failed to address a hazard in accordance with Awaab’s Law, or they believe repairs have not been completed within a reasonable timeframe.
At that point, the immediate priority should be resolving any ongoing risk and addressing the condition of the property. Questions around compensation, liability and settlement can, and often should, follow a separate track. The resident’s safety should remain the first consideration.
Perhaps the phrase that appears most consistently throughout the guidance is the concept of the “reasonable landlord”.
The accompanying hazard guidance goes further by explaining that this is intended to be an objective assessment, based on a notional reasonable landlord rather than the circumstances of a particular organisation.
In practical terms, this means that the sector will almost certainly continue to look towards emerging case law to better understand how these principles are applied in real-world situations. In truth, that should not be particularly surprising.
Long before Awaab’s Law, courts were regularly considering what constituted reasonable behaviour within the context of housing management and property conditions. The concept itself is therefore far from new.
In some ways, I actually find that reassuring. The goalposts have not suddenly moved to an entirely new part of the pitch, and the facts of each individual case still matter, as do the individual circumstances of the household. It also means there is no substitute for professional judgement.
What Awaab’s Law has done is provide greater structure, clearer expectations, and more defined timescales around how landlords should respond when serious hazards arise. The emphasis, however, remains firmly with the landlord.
The question is unlikely to be whether a landlord thought they acted reasonably. The question will be whether they can demonstrate that they acted in a way that a reasonable landlord, possessing the relevant knowledge and presented with the same facts, would have acted.
And that brings us neatly back to where we started:
The landlords most likely to succeed will be those that treat this as a whole-service, whole-organisation shift. They will train their people, support their contractors, improve their records, strengthen their communication, and keep learning when decisions do not go quite as planned.
Because Awaab’s Law is not just about completing repairs faster. It is about recognising risk earlier, responding more intelligently and making sure residents are safe in their homes, and really, that should have been the point all along.
If you're looking for support in understanding how to prepare for Awaab's Law Phase 2 coming into force in November, reach out to get in touch with our team of Awaab's Law experts.