Phase 1 of Awaab's Law has been in force since 27 October 2025, and it applies to one thing: damp and mould. From 30 November 2026, Phase 2 extends the same statutory timescales to seven further hazard types. Phase 3, in 2027, extends them to almost everything remaining in the housing health and safety rating system.
The duty does not change shape. What changes is how often it applies, and how many of your cases now start a clock that a court or the Ombudsman can read afterwards.
What the duty actually is
Two timescales, and both start from a recorded moment of landlord awareness rather than from a formal complaint:
- Investigate within 10 working days of becoming aware of a reported hazard that presents a significant risk, and give the tenant a written summary of the findings within 3 working days of the investigation concluding.
- Act within 24 hours where a hazard presents an imminent and significant risk of harm.
The second is the one that catches organisations out, because it does not wait for a triage meeting. Awareness is the trigger, and awareness is a matter of evidence.
The seven hazard types Phase 2 adds
Phase 2 brings in excess cold, excess heat, falls associated with baths, falls on the level, falls on stairs, falls between levels, structural collapse and explosions, fire and electrical hazards, and hygiene hazards including domestic and personal hygiene, pests and refuse. Read against the reports a repairs team already receives in a week, this is not an exotic list. It is the ordinary work, now with a clock on it.
Why this is a records problem before it is a repairs problem
A tenant mentions a cold bedroom to an operative who is there about a leaking tap. Under Phase 2, that conversation may be the moment the landlord became aware of an excess cold hazard, and the clock started. Nothing in the housing management system records it, so nothing counts down, and the first anyone knows is a claim or a determination naming the date.
That is the same failure mode Phase 1 exposed with damp and mould, and it is why the organisations that handled Phase 1 well did not do it by hiring more surveyors. They did it by capturing awareness reliably at every point a resident can raise something, and by holding the evidence trail behind each case: what was reported, when, what was done, and when.
Fifteen weeks is not long to change how a frontline records what it hears. It is long enough, if the work starts now.
Four questions for the next board meeting
- Where can a resident tell us about a hazard, and does every one of those routes start a clock? Count the phone line, the portal, the estate inspection, the contractor's visit and the housing officer's doorstep conversation. Any route that does not create a dated record is a route that cannot be defended.
- Can we produce, today, the date we became aware of any given case? Not the date it was logged. The date we knew.
- What is our current in-timescale rate on the Phase 1 hazards, and how do we know? If the answer comes from a spreadsheet someone maintains by hand, that is the answer to a different question.
- Which of the seven new hazard types do we already receive most often? That is where the volume will land on 30 November, and it is knowable now from the reports of the last twelve months.
What we would say if you asked us
The honest answer is that most providers will meet Phase 2 on the repairs side and struggle on the evidence side, exactly as they did with Phase 1. The gap is rarely willingness. It is that awareness arrives through human conversations and leaves no trace, and no amount of good intent reconstructs a date after the fact.
That is the problem TenantSafe exists to close: structured capture at the point a resident raises something, with the statutory clocks computed from the recorded moment of awareness rather than from a form someone remembered to fill in.
Sources: GOV.UK, Awaab's Law guidance and the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025. Phase 2 commencement confirmed for 30 November 2026. Current at 16 August 2026.