Awaab’s Law One Year On: Has It Changed The Sector’s Approach To Damp And Mould?

Processes have changed. Has the culture?

The government’s Test and Learn research found stronger prioritisation of serious hazards and more senior oversight. This is what you would hope a law like this would produce. It also found that tenants were most dissatisfied when deadlines were met without a durable fix, and that landlords had to make difficult decisions between moving fast enough to evidence compliance and taking the time to diagnose the cause properly.

This tension is the clearest sign that culture hasn’t fully caught up with process. When the timeline becomes the thing being managed, a mould wash within 5 working days can be logged as a success on a report, even when the cause hasn’t been touched. Some landlords were also found to be over-categorising cases as emergencies to protect themselves against non-compliance.

The guidance is clear that it is unacceptable to put damp and mould down to a resident’s “lifestyle”, yet advice to heat more and ventilate more still lands on households who are rationing energy. That isn’t to say there is no role for residents. Reporting problems early and making good use of ventilation and heating both matter, but that depends on residents having fans that work, heating they can afford to run alongside clear advice, and trust that a report will lead to action rather than blame. The real test is in homes where nobody reports anything at all, because residents have given up, worry about being blamed or have lived with condensation so long it feels normal. An approach built around responding to reports will never reach them. An approach built around understanding the condition of homes can. 

What evidence do we actually have?

Less than we need. The Test and Learn study was qualitative, based on 30 tenants and 35 landlords in the earliest months of the law. It tells us how implementation feels, not whether conditions have improved. The English Housing Survey recorded damp in 7% of social rented homes in 2024, a statistically significant increase since 2022, but that predates the law.

Landlords’ own data mostly measures activity: reports received, investigations completed, timescales met. None of it tells you whether a home is better. A property that has had three mould washes in a year, each delivered on time, looks like a success on most dashboards. In reality it is a failure recorded three times. Scotland offers a useful contrast. Since April 2025, the Scottish Housing Regulator has required landlords to report through the Annual Return on the Charter the average time taken to resolve damp and mould cases, the percentage of resolved cases that were reopened and the number still open at year end, each broken down by whether the cause was condensation or structural.

Better evidence would track outcomes: whether the cause was fixed, how often hazards recur and what residents say when someone goes back and asks. The guidance already expects landlords to follow up once work is complete. Treating that follow-up as data, rather than a courtesy call, would give boards something far more meaningful than a percentage of deadlines met. 

Damp and mould as part of strategic asset management

Awaab’s Law already requires supplementary preventative work to stop hazards coming back. When the same problem appears across similar properties, it usually points to something shared: a construction type, ventilation strategies that don’t work in practice or earlier improvement work that changed how the building handles moisture. Bringing together repairs history, stock condition data, energy performance and resident reports lets landlords spot those patterns and target investment.

Environmental monitoring has an important part to play too. The government’s guidance recognises that these systems help landlords take proactive responsibility for their homes and tenants, while being clear that a risk alert does not on its own mean a landlord is aware of a hazard. Consistent readings that point to a problem should, however, prompt investigation. Used well, with clear ownership and agreed thresholds for action, monitoring shows what happens on a continuous basis, identifies homes and residents who don’t self-report, and shows whether an intervention worked.

Retrofit is an important area for this. Insulating homes without getting ventilation right can create the very conditions we are trying to eliminate. As Warm Homes Plan funding continues to flow into social housing, landlords should measure how homes actually perform after works rather than relying on modelled EPC improvements. Measured heat transfer coefficient (HTC), calculated using, and subsequently paired with, indoor temperature and humidity data, can show whether a home is genuinely warmer and drier, not just better on paper. 

Getting ready for Phase 2 and 3

Phase 2 comes into force on 30 November 2026, bringing in excess cold and heat, falls, structural collapse and explosions, fire and electrical hazards, and domestic and personal hygiene and food safety. Phase three will cover the remaining HHSRS hazards except overcrowding in 2027, and the government is consulting on extending the law to private rented tenancies.

Excess cold is the hazard I would urge landlords to think hardest about. Cold homes and damp homes are often the same homes, and households cutting back on heating are among those most at risk from both. Much of what landlords have built for damp and mould will carry straight across. But it also exposes a gap. Awaab’s Law covers defects landlords must fix. It has nothing to say about a well-insulated home with a working boiler that is still cold because the resident can’t afford to heat it. This will need a different approach.

The next twelve months

Awaab’s Law has made damp and mould a board-level issue and given residents a legal backstop. The next year needs to prove how we can move from “are we meeting the deadlines?” to “are our homes getting healthier, and how do we know?” With Phase 2 weeks away, that second question is the one the sector needs to be able to answer.

By Alex Garmston, Marketing Manager, Aico

Image credit: Aico