Awaab's Law and Excess Cold: Winter 2026

Of all the hazards Awaab's Law Phase 2 brings into scope, excess cold is the one most likely to land on your desk first.

Phase 2 comes into force on 30 November 2026. That is not a neutral date. It is the start of the coldest quarter of the year, which means the first statutory clocks under the new regime will very likely be heating failures — and the first full month of operation runs across the Christmas and New Year bank holidays.

This post covers what excess cold means in this context, how the significant-hazard test applies to a heating failure, and the December arithmetic that is going to catch people out.

Excess Cold Is In Scope From Day One

The GOV.UK collection lists the hazards Phase 2 adds, and excess cold is the first of them:

excess cold, excess heat, falls on the level (including falls on the level, falls on stairs, etc, and falls between levels), structural collapse, fire and explosions, electrical hazards, domestic hygiene

(One qualification on that list: "fire and explosions" excludes fire risk arising from a deficiency in an FSO-regulated part of a building containing two or more dwellings. Communal fire hazards in blocks of flats sit outside Awaab's Law from 30 November 2026 — see the Phase 2 commencement post.)

Excess cold is paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005 — grouped as a physiological hazard in the HHSRS Operating Guidance rather than in the Regulations themselves — see HHSRS hazards and Awaab's Law Phase 2 for how the framework fits together. From 30 November, where it presents a significant risk of harm, it starts the same statutory clocks that damp and mould do today.

There Is No Temperature That Settles It

This is worth stating plainly, because it is the first question most teams ask.

Awaab's Law does not work by setting a temperature below which a property is non-compliant. The test is whether the hazard presents a significant risk of harm — and the GOV.UK triage guidance frames that as whether a reasonable landlord would make the situation safe within the statutory window.

So a thermometer reading is evidence, not an answer. What turns a cold property into a significant hazard is the combination of how cold, for how long, with what prospect of improvement, for whom.

That last element does a lot of work. The triage guidance directs landlords to factor in "the tenants' circumstances, including the age and physical and mental health" of the household — while also making clear that a tenant "does not necessarily have to have a specific vulnerability for a hazard to be deemed a significant hazard".

In practice, for a heating failure in December, the questions that matter are:

• Is there any working heating at all, or partial heating in some rooms?
• How long has it been out, and when is the repair realistically scheduled?
• Who lives there — infants, elderly residents, anyone with a respiratory or cardiac condition, anyone with reduced mobility who cannot move around to keep warm?
• Is there a secondary risk? Cold properties and condensation problems travel together, and a prolonged heating failure can seed the damp and mould case you deal with in March.

Temporary Heating Is A Legitimate Make-Safe

The triage guidance recognises that a reasonable landlord may use interim measures to make a situation safe while the permanent repair is scheduled. For excess cold, that is the difference between a workable winter and an impossible one.

A boiler that needs a part on order does not have to mean a breached deadline. Temporary heaters, delivered promptly and adequate for the property, can meet the make-safe obligation while the substantive repair proceeds within its own window.

Three things make this work in practice, and all three are worth setting up before 30 November rather than during the first cold snap:

1. Have the stock. Deciding to use temporary heating is only useful if you can put it in a property the same day. Work out now where it comes from and who authorises it.
2. Record the delivery, not the decision. "Temporary heaters offered" is not evidence. "Two oil-filled radiators delivered 14:20 on 3 December, signed for" is.
3. Do not let it close the case. The interim measure satisfies make-safe; it does not satisfy the repair. The supplementary works clock keeps running.

The December Problem

Here is the arithmetic nobody enjoys.

Phase 2 starts on 30 November. "Working day" is defined in regulation 2 of SI 2025/1042 as "any day other than— (a) a Saturday or Sunday, (b) Christmas Day or Good Friday, or (c) a day which is a bank holiday under the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 in England and Wales". Christmas Day sits in its own limb because it is a common-law holiday in England and Wales, not a 1971 Act bank holiday; Boxing Day and New Year's Day are 1971 Act bank holidays under limb (c), and where they fall on a weekend, substitute days follow. Three limbs, all excluded, all in the same fortnight.

Which means a hazard reported in mid-December has its investigation deadline pushed further into January than intuition suggests, while a hazard reported just before the break may have far less genuine working time available than the raw day-count implies. Both directions are dangerous: the first invites complacency, the second invites a missed deadline.

Two things to do about it:

• Walk three real December dates through every stage by hand, and check them against the deadline calculator, which accounts for England and Wales bank holidays. Any disagreement is worth resolving before it is live.
• Decide who owns the process over the break. A 24-hour emergency clock does not pause for annual leave, and the out-of-hours channel has to write a real arrival timestamp into the case record — because day zero is when you became aware, however that awareness arrived.

For the full set of stages and their windows, see the step-by-step guide to complying with Awaab's Law.

What To Have Ready Before The Cold

A short list, because there is not much time:

• Know your at-risk stock. Which properties have the oldest heating systems, the worst insulation, or a history of winter callouts. That is your likely first caseload.
• Know your at-risk households. Where vulnerability information already exists, make sure the triage decision can see it. Asking the question at the point of report is fine; discovering it after the deadline is not.
• Write the excess cold triage rule. What a significant risk of harm looks like in your stock, what goes straight to the emergency route, and what is genuinely out of scope. See triaging Awaab's Law Phase 2 hazards.
• Line up contractor capacity for heating specifically. A five-working-day safety-work window is tight for a trade that is busiest in exactly the weeks you will need it.
• Sort temporary heating logistics now, not on the first cold Friday.

Common Questions

Is excess cold covered by Awaab's Law? From 30 November 2026, yes — where it presents a significant risk of harm.

Is there a legal minimum temperature? Not as an Awaab's Law trigger. The test is significant risk of harm, assessed on the circumstances, not a fixed threshold.

Does a heating failure always start a clock? No. It starts one where the resulting cold presents a significant risk of harm. A brief outage with a same-day repair in mild weather is unlikely to; a prolonged failure in December in a household with vulnerable residents very likely does.

Do temporary heaters satisfy the obligation? They can satisfy the make-safe obligation while the permanent repair proceeds within its own window. They do not close the case.

What about excess heat? Also added by Phase 2, on the same test. It will matter in summer rather than at commencement, but the triage rule should cover both.

Winter is when the first Phase 2 caseload arrives, and it arrives across a period with fewer working days and thinner cover than any other. Tracking those clocks by hand, over Christmas, is exactly the job that should be automated — join the HazardClock waitlist for early access.

This is general guidance for UK registered providers and social landlords, not legal advice. Whether a particular case presents a significant risk of harm turns on its facts. Phase 2 commencement is stated as at the date of this post and the amending instrument was in draft at that time — always confirm the current position against the GOV.UK Awaab's Law collection.

Last reviewed: 28 October 2026.

Sources

• Awaab's Law in the social rented sector — GOV.UK
• Awaab's Law Phase 2: Guidance for social landlords — GOV.UK
• Awaab's Law Phase 2: Guidance to support triaging of hazards — GOV.UK