When Sarah Killick first noticed the black patches spreading across her walls, she did what any tenant would: she reported it to her social landlord and waited. Months passed. The mould crept further. The anxiety became, in her own words, insufferable — so consuming that she ground her teeth in her sleep and permanently damaged them. When Awaab's law came into force in October last year, promising to compel landlords to act swiftly on exactly these conditions, Killick expected relief. She is still waiting.
Her experience is not unusual. Twelve months after England's landmark housing hazards legislation took effect, residents across the country are reporting that the law's promise has not translated into practice. Understanding why requires looking carefully at what the legislation does — and, critically, what it does not.
What Is Awaab's Law and Why Was It Introduced
Awaab Ishak was two years old when he died in Rochdale in December 2020. The inquest into his death, concluded in 2022, found that his fatal respiratory condition was caused by prolonged exposure to severe mould in the family's social housing flat. His landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, had repeatedly failed to address the problem. The case became a watershed — not because damp and mould in social housing was new, but because it had killed a child and the evidence was now on public record.
Awaab's law was introduced as part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. Named explicitly in his honour, it created binding timescales for social landlords in England to respond to reported hazards. After a phased rollout, the core provisions came into effect in October 2025. The legislation applies to registered providers of social housing — housing associations, local authority landlords, and arm's-length management organisations — covering the estimated four million households living in England's social rented sector.
The law was not framed as optional guidance. It was enforcement by statute.
One Year On: How Tenants Are Still Living With Damp and Mould
Killick's story is emblematic of a pattern advocates have tracked since the legislation came into force. Despite the new legal framework, tenants say their landlords are either moving too slowly, disputing whether conditions qualify as emergencies, or simply failing to respond within the mandated windows at all.
Read next Medicaid Work Requirements Strand Cancer SurvivorsThe English Housing Survey, published annually by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, has consistently recorded that a significant minority of social homes contain category 1 hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System — the most severe classification, covering risks that present a serious and immediate threat to health. Damp and mould are among the most frequently cited. Campaigners at Shelter and Generation Rent have both noted that complaint volumes from social housing tenants have not meaningfully declined since October 2025, suggesting the deterrent effect of the new law has been limited.
For Killick, the practical reality is this: she reported her problem, was told it would be investigated, and months later remains in a home where conditions have not substantially improved. The stress, she says, is physical. That her anxiety expressed itself as bruxism — teeth-grinding that caused permanent dental damage — speaks to the embodied cost of insecure housing. It is not an abstraction. It is a body bearing the load of a failed system.
What Awaab's Law Actually Requires Social Landlords to Do
The legislation is specific about timescales, and that specificity matters. When a social tenant reports a hazard that constitutes an emergency — an immediately dangerous condition such as a severe structural failure or a carbon monoxide leak — the landlord must respond within 24 hours. This is a hard deadline, not a target.
For reported damp and mould or other non-emergency but significant hazards, Awaab's law requires landlords to carry out an investigation within 14 days of the report. If that investigation confirms a hazard exists, remedial work must begin within seven days, with completion within a timeframe deemed reasonable given the nature of the problem. Landlords who breach these timescales are in breach of their tenancy agreements and can face enforcement action from the Regulator of Social Housing.
The law also places an obligation on landlords to keep tenants informed throughout the process. Silence, which has historically been a common landlord response, is itself now a form of non-compliance.
Why the Law Is Not Delivering for Many Social Housing Residents
Three structural problems are blunting the law's effect. The first is enforcement capacity. The Regulator of Social Housing oversees compliance but operates through a relatively small inspectorate. Housing law solicitors have noted that individual tenants who believe their landlord has breached the timescales face the burden of proving that breach through the courts or through the Housing Ombudsman, a process that is slow, often bewildering for those without legal knowledge, and rarely produces urgent remedies.
The second problem is definitional. Landlords retain some discretion over what constitutes a category 1 hazard requiring emergency response. Environmental health officers, who have powers to inspect under the Housing Act 2004, have described cases where landlords classify conditions as routine maintenance rather than statutory hazards, thereby sidestepping the tighter timescales Awaab's law introduces. This is not always bad faith; it sometimes reflects genuine professional disagreement. But it creates a gap that tenants with urgent problems fall into.
Third, capacity. Many social landlords are operating under severe financial pressure, with ageing housing stock and constrained maintenance budgets. The intention to comply may exist while the physical and financial resource to do so does not. A 14-day investigation window assumes an available surveyor. A seven-day repair start assumes available contractors. In parts of England where social landlord capacity has been eroded for years, these assumptions do not hold.
The Broader Crisis in England's Social Housing Stock
The damp and mould problem did not begin with Awaab Ishak's death, and it will not end with legislation alone. The Regulator of Social Housing's national inspection programme, launched in recent years, has found repeated instances of landlords with systemic maintenance failures — estates where problems are not isolated but widespread and structural.
England's social housing stock is, on average, ageing. Much of it was built in the post-war decades when insulation standards were far lower than current requirements. Retrofitting these properties to modern thermal and moisture standards requires capital investment that has not materialised at the scale needed. The result is a housing stock that produces damp not through landlord negligence alone but through the physics of cold, poorly insulated buildings meeting warm, humid air.
Awaab's law addresses the response to reported hazards. It does not address the underlying condition of the buildings generating those hazards. That gap is significant.
What Needs to Change to Make Awaab's Law Work
The law exists. Enforcement is the missing variable. Shelter and other housing charities have argued for a more proactive regulatory regime — one in which landlords are required to survey their own stock for category 1 hazards and remediate proactively, rather than waiting for tenants to report. Reactive compliance frameworks place the burden of enforcement on the tenant, who is by definition already in a vulnerable position.
Environmental health officers need adequate resourcing. Local authorities have seen significant cuts to housing enforcement teams over the past decade, meaning the statutory powers that exist are not always matched by the personnel to exercise them. Greater coordination between local authority environmental health departments and the Regulator of Social Housing — including a clearer escalation pathway when landlords miss the 14-day and seven-day windows — would strengthen the system considerably.
For tenants like Sarah Killick, the debate is not abstract. She is living in a home she is legally entitled to have made safe. The law says so. What she needs now is not more legislation but the institutional will to make the legislation already on the books mean something.
Awaab Ishak's parents campaigned for a law bearing their son's name because they believed no family should have to bury a child over a mouldy wall. One year on, the law is in place. The conditions that killed him, in too many homes, are not yet gone.
Source: Society | The Guardian
