John Angus, Managing Director at Switch Management Ltd
The Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025, widely known as ‘Awaab’s Law’, came into force on 27 October 2025, introducing new obligations for social landlords. The legislation now requires hazards such as damp and mould to be investigated and remedied within set timeframes, with clear records that evidence compliance.
Named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who tragically died in 2020 following prolonged exposure to mould in his home, the legislation aims to improve living conditions across the social housing sector. From October 2026, its scope will widen to incorporate additional hazards, including excess heat or cold, structural collapse risks, and fire and electrical safety.
These reforms represent a critical step forward for tenant safety. However, implementing the new requirements of the legislation across large and complex portfolios will require significant financial and operational resource from already stretched teams.
Rising demand and expenditure
Approximately 130,000 households are currently living in temporary accommodation, including 175,990 children – the highest number on record. Due to the shortage of social housing available, many families are being housed in hotels or B&Bs, often sharing facilities with other residents.
Local authorities are also spending more than ever on temporary housing solutions. The Local Government Association reported that since 2017-18, councils across England have spent almost £1.5bn more on temporary accommodation than has been reimbursed through government housing benefit. Without intervention, the figure is likely to increase to £3.9bn in the next four years.
Against this backdrop of financial pressure, housing teams are also managing growing waiting lists, ageing stock and increasingly complex compliance requirements. As a result, the capacity of local authorities to inspect, assess and remediate issues within the prescribed timeframes is increasingly under strain – and many are turning to external experts for help.
In October 2025, Bristol City Council stated that it lacked the resources needed to audit its properties and meet the deadlines for addressing damp and mould, due to an extensive backlog of more than 2,000 properties. It also raised concerns that outdated IT systems made it difficult to track hazards and ensure their proper remediation.
The scale and practical implications of this issue are beginning to emerge across the sector. Over a six-month period last year, as part of our Switch Housing programme, we audited 572 council-run homes and 600 B&Bs on behalf of a local authority in London.
Of these residences, 50% displayed signs of damp and mould, while 30% were deemed inappropriate for the tenant. For housing officers overseeing portfolios with hundreds of properties – often with constantly rotating tenancies – the scale of the remedial work required may have otherwise been left undetected.
Similarly, 250 homes were under-occupied and 90 were over-crowded, and despite multiple attempts to make contact, a total of 325 tenants in the temporary accommodation, B&Bs and hostels surveyed were unreachable. This indicated potential vacancies that could amount to annual savings as high as £7.8 million.
Without the capacity to regularly monitor and record occupancy rates, councils may be unknowingly paying for uninhabited or underoccupied homes, just as waiting lists continue to grow.
A partnership solution
Since the introduction of Awaab’s Law, the challenge has not only been identifying hazards, but ensuring issues are recorded, resolved and evidenced through clear documentation.
Proactive tenant engagement is a valuable stepping stone towards continued compliance. However, effectively carrying out such a process can be difficult to sustain within existing teams. As demand for temporary accommodation has increased, so too have the operational requirements involved.
Auditing involves dedicated software, the ability to identify and document issues and implementing systems that can track remediation within the prescribed timeframes. Detailed digital documentation also creates a clear audit trail of accountability, enabling local authorities to demonstrate compliance, if required.
When proactive inspections can’t be regularly carried out, issues such as mould and damp become worse, causing increased financial and reputational implications, while putting tenants at risk of serious health issues.
Specialist property experts can support local authorities by providing comprehensive tenant surveys and audits of temporary accommodation, to ease the administrative burden. This gives local housing officers more capacity to act on the data provided, which in turn streamlines processes, reduces costs, and provides families with safe and compliant accommodation.
Targeting improved outcomes
Regular auditing is required to ensure families living in temporary accommodation have a secure, hazard-free place to live. However, for increasingly stretched teams, conducting regular large-scale inspections can put resources at their limit, to the potential detriment of compliance.
Partnerships with specialist housing providers, such as Switch Management Ltd, allow local authorities to identify and remediate hazards more efficiently, particularly where internal resources are limited. Combining routine audits with detailed tenant feedback ensures that risks are highlighted at the earliest opportunity, allowing council officers to focus on the delivery of timely and compliant housing solutions.
Ultimately, with the scope of hazards covered under Awaab’s Law set to expand later this year, it is important to get to grips with existing housing stock to ensure issues can be addressed at the earliest opportunity. When adopting partnerships with external specialists, local authorities can reduce expenditure, improve auditing standards, and most importantly ensure vulnerable families have a safe place to call home.