There is mould creeping up the wall of your child's bedroom, or the boiler has died in the middle of winter, and you have reported it to the council or housing association more than once. Nothing has moved. For years that was where it stopped, with a repair "logged" and no date attached.
That changed on 27 October 2025. Awaab's Law now gives your social landlord hard, legally enforceable deadlines to investigate and fix damp, mould, and emergency hazards. This guide sets out exactly what those deadlines are, how to report a problem so the clock starts, and what you can do when a deadline passes with nothing done. It covers social housing in England, which is the regime in force today. Social tenants in Wales are not covered by these timescales.
What Awaab's Law requires social landlords to do from 27 October 2025
Awaab's Law is named after Awaab Ishak, the two-year-old who died in 2020 from prolonged exposure to mould in a Rochdale social home his landlord had been told about repeatedly. It works by writing repair deadlines into your tenancy as an implied term. That legal route comes from section 42 of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, which inserted a new section 10A into the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
Because the deadlines are a term of your tenancy, you can enforce them the same way you would any other broken promise in the contract, as a disrepair claim in the County Court, not the First-tier Tribunal. You can also complain to the Housing Ombudsman. Both routes are covered further down.
The first phase, live now, covers two things: emergency hazards, and significant damp and mould. Later phases add more hazards in stages, and we come back to those at the end.
How quickly must a council or housing association deal with damp and mould?
For significant damp and mould that is not an emergency, three clocks run.
Your landlord must investigate within 10 working days of finding out about the problem. Once that investigation ends, two more deadlines start from that day, not from the day you first reported it. Your landlord must give you a written summary of what they found within 3 working days of the investigation ending. And they must complete the relevant safety work, so the home is made safe, within 5 working days of the investigation ending. That is finished, not merely started.
Making the home safe is not always the end of it. Where wider work is needed to stop the hazard coming back, that supplementary preventative work must also begin within 5 working days of the investigation ending. If that is genuinely not possible, the landlord must take steps to secure it begins, physically starting within 12 weeks at the latest and finishing within a reasonable period. The work has to happen in that order, not whenever the landlord chooses.
If the home cannot be made safe within these timescales, the landlord must offer you suitable alternative accommodation at its own cost.
What counts as an emergency hazard a landlord must fix in 24 hours?
Some hazards cannot wait 10 days. An emergency hazard is one that poses a significant and imminent risk of harm, and here the deadline is short. Your landlord must investigate and make the home safe within 24 hours of becoming aware of it.
This covers the dangerous, time-critical failures: a gas leak, a total loss of heating or hot water in cold weather, dangerous electrics, a serious uncontained leak, or the most severe damp and mould. Making safe within 24 hours does not always mean a permanent fix. It means removing the immediate danger, for example by making a temporary repair or providing heaters, with the full repair to follow.
If you think what you are living with is an emergency, say so clearly when you report it, and say why.
How to report damp and mould so the Awaab's Law clock starts
The deadlines only start once your landlord is on notice, so how you report the problem matters.
Report it in writing if you can, through the landlord's repairs line or complaints system, and keep a copy. A written report with a date is what fixes the day the clock starts and gives you a clean record if a deadline is missed. Describe the hazard, where it is, how long it has been there, and the effect it is having, especially on anyone in the home who is a young child, elderly, or unwell.
Take photos with dates. If the damp or mould is affecting someone's health, such as a child's asthma, mention it to your GP so there is a medical record, and tell your landlord about it too, because it goes to how serious the hazard is.
Then note the date, because from that point you can count the working days yourself.
What to do if your landlord misses an Awaab's Law deadline
If a deadline passes and nothing has happened, you have two routes, and you can use them at the same time.
Start with your landlord's formal complaints procedure, in writing, setting out the dates and which deadline was missed. If that does not resolve it, escalate to the Housing Ombudsman, the free complaint service for social tenants. The Ombudsman can order your landlord to put things right and to pay compensation.
Separately, because the timescales are a term of your tenancy, a missed deadline is a breach you can take to the County Court as a disrepair claim, alongside the older repair duties under section 9A and section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. A well-drafted letter of claim under the pre-action protocol often gets a landlord moving without a hearing. Our guide to the housing disrepair protocol walks through how that works.
What can you claim for damp and mould in a social home?
Two things are usually on the table. Getting the work done, and compensation for the time you lived with the hazard and any damage it caused.
Courts award disrepair compensation as a proportion of your rent for the period the problem went unfixed, with more serious and prolonged hazards attracting more. There is no fixed percentage, and the right figure depends on how bad the conditions were and how long they lasted. Our guide on how much compensation you can claim for disrepair explains how those awards are worked out. You can also claim for belongings the damp destroyed, such as clothes, furniture, or a child's mattress.
When will Awaab's Law cover more hazards?
For social housing, Phase 2 starts on 30 November 2026, adding hazards including excess cold and heat, falls, fire and electrical safety, and hygiene. Phase 3 is announced for 2027, covering the remaining hazards apart from overcrowding.
Private renters are on a separate timetable. The government roadmap leaves implementation dates subject to consultation, with no start year set. Our guide to Awaab's Law and private renters explains their existing repair rights.
Remedy can check whether your landlord has missed an Awaab's Law deadline, draft the formal complaint or letter of claim with the right law cited, and help you build the evidence bundle. The first assessment is free.
