Awaab’s Law began as a social-housing reform, born from the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in a mould-affected flat in Rochdale. It is now phasing into force — and its reach is growing. From October 2025, social landlords have faced fixed timescales for investigating and fixing emergency hazards and damp and mould. Further hazard categories follow through 2026 and 2027. And under the Renters’ Rights reforms, the same regime is set to extend to the private rented sector from 2027.
If you manage tenanted stock, that last sentence is the one that matters. The clock that today runs against housing associations will soon run against your landlords — and, in practice, against you.
What the law actually demands
Stripped to its mechanics, Awaab’s Law is a set of deadlines attached to evidence. When a hazard is reported, the landlord must investigate within a fixed window, provide written findings, begin remedial work within a set period, and complete it within a reasonable time. Emergency hazards carry the shortest timescales.
Every one of those obligations is a timestamp. When was the issue reported? When was it inspected? When did works start, and when did they finish? A landlord who did everything right but cannot evidence it is, for practical purposes, in the same position as one who did nothing.
Why shared inboxes fail this test
Most letting and management businesses still run repairs through a shared inbox, a phone line and a spreadsheet. That workflow has survived because it mostly works — until someone asks you to prove a timeline. Then you are reconstructing events from email threads, call logs that live in someone’s mobile, and a contractor’s invoice date standing in for a completion date.
The uncomfortable truth: response-time regulation makes the intake channel the compliance system. If issues arrive as voicemails, your evidence trail starts with a gap.
What to have in place before 2027
You do not need to wait for the statutory instruments to know the shape of what is coming. Four capabilities cover it:
- Structured intake. Tenants report through guided forms that capture the category, location, photos and access preferences — timestamped from the first tap, impossible to lose in an inbox.
- Automatic escalation. Emergency categories flagged at the point of reporting, not discovered two days later in triage.
- A tracked middle. Inspection, quotes, appointment, works started, works completed — each step recorded as it happens, visible to the tenant, logged for you.
- Exportable evidence. When a dispute or an ombudsman enquiry lands, the full intake-to-resolution trail for any property should be one export, not one week of archaeology.
The quiet advantage
Here is the part rarely said out loud: the firms that put structured reporting in place early do not just reduce their regulatory exposure. They answer fewer status calls, lose fewer appointments to no-access visits, and handle more doors per member of staff. The compliance case gets the budget approved; the operational case is why nobody ever switches back.
FaciliTasker gives tenanted portfolios exactly this: guided tenant reporting, automatic notifications, and a timestamped record from first report to signed-off completion — generated by the workflow itself, not by extra admin. If 2027 is on your planning horizon, book a demo and bring one problem property.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Timescales and scope are being phased in through secondary legislation — check the current position for your stock.
