What does Awaab's Law mean for private landlords, and what proof do you need?

Damp and mould is the complaint that ages badly. A tenant sends a photo of a dark patch in a bedroom corner, somebody has a look, a wipe down happens, and everyone moves on. Eighteen months later the patch is back and larger, and the argument is no longer about a corner of a bedroom. It is about who was told what, when, and whether anything was actually done. That argument is decided on records, and most private landlords do not have them.

Awaab's Law is the reason this is worth getting ahead of. It is named after Awaab Ishak, the two year old who died in Rochdale in 2020 after prolonged exposure to mould in his family's flat, and it puts fixed clocks on how quickly a landlord must investigate and act. Those clocks apply to social landlords now. The question for everyone else is what happens when the same thinking reaches the private rented sector, and what you should be keeping in the meantime.

Does Awaab's Law apply to private landlords yet?

No. The first phase came into force in the social rented sector in England on 27 October 2025, covering emergency hazards and significant damp and mould. Private landlords are not measured against those timescales today.

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received royal assent on the same date, and its main tenancy reforms took effect on 1 May 2026. The Act contains the power to extend Awaab's Law to the private rented sector, but using that power needs separate regulations, and the government has said it will consult on how the duties should apply before setting a date. Commentary generally points to 2027 at the earliest. Nothing is confirmed, and no private landlord should plan around a date that has not been laid down.

What is confirmed is the direction. Standards expected of social landlords keep arriving in the private sector a few years later, and the Renters' Rights Act has already brought the Decent Homes Standard into view for private lettings too. The record you start keeping now is the one you will be judged on when the timescales land.

What does the law ask of a social landlord, and how fast?

The duties are worth knowing because they are the clearest statement anyone has made about what a reasonable response to damp looks like. For social landlords in England the clocks run as follows.

An emergency hazard is one that poses an imminent and significant risk of harm. The counting matters as much as the deadline: the day after the landlord becomes aware is day one, so the clock starts on the report, not on the day somebody gets round to reading it. That is a detail worth carrying into your own practice whatever sector you are in, because it decides what the first date in your record needs to be.

What already binds a private landlord today?

Plenty, and this is the part that gets missed while everyone watches for the new rules. Four things already apply.

• Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. You must keep the structure and exterior in repair, along with the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, heating and hot water. A failed roof or a leaking pipe behind a wall sits squarely here.
• The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018. A property in England must be fit to live in at the start of the tenancy and throughout it. A tenant can take the landlord to court directly, without waiting for the council to act, and serious damp and mould is one of the most common routes to an unfit finding.
• The Housing Health and Safety Rating System. A council can inspect, score damp and mould growth as a hazard and serve an improvement notice. Ignoring one is an offence and can lead to a civil penalty or a rent repayment order.
• Government guidance on damp and mould in rented housing. It is direct about not blaming tenant lifestyle by default, and expects landlords to find the underlying cause rather than treat the surface. Advice to open a window is not, on its own, an investigation.

There is one more change that quietly raises the stakes. Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026, so a landlord who receives an awkward damp complaint can no longer simply end the tenancy and move on. Possession now requires a statutory ground. The complaint stays in the relationship, and so does the record of how it was handled.

Why is damp and mould so hard to defend after the event?

Because it is an argument about cause and timing, not about facts anyone disputes. Everybody agrees there is mould on the wall. What is contested is whether it came from condensation, a bridged cavity, a failed extractor fan, a slipped tile or a leak upstairs, and whether the landlord moved on it once or three times or not at all.

Both of those questions are answered by things that only exist if you captured them at the time. Mould spreads and then gets cleaned, so a photo taken today tells you nothing about the state a year ago. A contractor remembers a visit but not the date, and a conversation in a hallway leaves no trace at all. The landlord who acted properly and the landlord who did nothing look identical in an empty file, and only one of them loses out by that.

This is the whole point we keep coming back to in these guides. Doing the work is only half the job, and being able to prove it is the half that actually protects you.

What does a defensible damp and mould record look like?

For each report, six things.

1. The date the tenant told you, and their own words, kept rather than paraphrased.
2. The date somebody attended, who they were, and what they were asked to look at.
3. Photos taken on the visit: the affected area close up and wide, the ceiling and wall above it, the window and reveal, the extractor fan and trickle vents, and the outside wall behind it including the guttering.
4. What was found and what was believed to be causing it, written down that day rather than reconstructed later.
5. What was done, on what date, with photos after that match the ones before.
6. What you told the tenant and when, including any ventilation advice and any follow up visit you arranged to check it had not returned.

That last item is the one landlords skip and the one that carries the most weight. A single visit looks like a brush off. A visit, a written explanation and a check back six weeks later looks like a landlord managing a building, and it reads that way to a judge, an adjudicator or a council officer.

How do you keep that trail without it becoming a second job?

The reason most damp records are thin is not carelessness. It is that keeping one is dull, manual and easy to defer, so it happens properly for the first report and then slips. The fix is not more discipline. It is to have the record assemble itself while the work is being done, so there is nothing to remember and nothing to file afterwards.

That is the part Lodgic quietly takes off you. Because the whole job runs through one WhatsApp number, the tenant's original message is the first date in the trail. A contractor opens the job when they arrive, adds photos before and after and signs it off, and every image carries its own date. An inspection walks room by room into a dated report, and anything found is raised as a job for review. The follow up visit sits against the same property as the original report, so the timeline reads in order. Nobody files anything, and when someone asks what you did about the mould in the back bedroom in March, the answer takes a minute.

What should you do the day a tenant reports mould?

1. Acknowledge it in writing the same day, so the start of the clock is fixed and visible.
2. Ask for photos and the history: how long, which rooms, whether it returns after cleaning.
3. Get someone there quickly, and treat 10 working days as your own ceiling even though it does not yet bind you.
4. Look for the cause, not the stain. Check the fan actually extracts, check outside as well as inside.
5. Tell the tenant in writing what you found and what happens next, with a date.
6. Book the check back before you close the job, and photograph it again when you get there.

This is general information and not legal advice. Rules change and the position for private landlords is still developing, so check the current requirements for your property or take advice on your own circumstances.