Awaab's Law Phase 2 Confirmed: 30 Nov 2026

Awaab's Law Phase 2 comes into force on 30 November 2026. The date is confirmed, the hazard list is published, and the guidance landlords need to work from has been available since July.

If you have been planning against "expected 2026" — which is all anyone could say until this summer — the planning window now has a hard edge. This post sets out what has been confirmed, what has not, and what changes for a social landlord on the day.

The Confirmed Position

The government published its Phase 2 guidance in July 2026 (first published 13 July, updated to an HTML version on 31 July). The GOV.UK guidance for social landlords states it plainly:

From 30 November 2026, Awaab's Law will be extended to the following hazards where they present a significant risk of harm

The instrument itself is the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026. Its first regulation reads:

These Regulations come into force on 30th November 2026.

It amends SI 2025/1042, the regulations that brought in Phase 1.

The procedural clocks carry over unchanged (see the table below), but it is not accurate to say nothing legal changes. The amending instrument rewrites the definitions in regulation 3 of SI 2025/1042. Regulation 3(2) provides:

in sub-paragraph (b), for "take steps to make safe as a matter of urgency" substitute "make safe within 15 working days"; (b) in sub-paragraph (d), omit "take steps to".

Sub-paragraph (b) is the definition of "significant risk of harm", so the open-textured "as a matter of urgency" threshold becomes a fixed 15-working-day reasonable-landlord test. Regulation 3(3) then inserts a new "excluded fire hazard" carve-out (below), and regulation 4 narrows the definition of "work": after "safe" it inserts "but does not include any action required under the Fire Safety (Residential Evacuation Plans) (England) Regulations 2025". So: same timescales, more hazards, and a changed set of definitions deciding when those timescales bite.

One Thing Worth Knowing: The Regulations Are Still In Draft

This is the part most coverage leaves out, and it matters if you are writing a board paper.

As at the time of writing, the amending regulations had not yet been made. Legislation.gov.uk carries the instrument with the note "This is a draft item of legislation and has not yet been made as a UK Statutory Instrument.", and no SI number has been assigned to it. Phase 1's instrument, by contrast, is SI 2025/1042 — a made instrument with a number.

What that means in practice:

• The date is a firm government commitment, not yet a commenced legal obligation. It was announced alongside published guidance and an impact assessment, so it is about as solid as a pre-commencement date gets.
• Plan for 30 November 2026. Treating it as anything other than the working date would be an odd risk to take, given the volume of guidance already published against it.
• Confirm the position before you rely on it in a formal document. Check the GOV.UK collection for the current status.

Nobody expects the date to move. But "the regulations come into force on 30 November" and "the regulations have been made" are different statements, and a board paper is a bad place to blur them.

Which Hazards Phase 2 Adds

Phase 1 covers damp and mould, plus emergency hazards. "Emergency hazard" is not unlimited: regulation 3(2) of SI 2025/1042 requires that, for an emergency hazard, "the risk of harm is not associated with a lack of adequate space for living and sleeping (or either of those things)" — so it reaches every prescribed hazard except crowding and space. From 30 November 2026, the statutory timescales extend to a wider set of hazards where they present a significant risk of harm. The GOV.UK collection lists them as:

• Excess cold
• Excess heat
• Falls on the level, falls on stairs, and falls between levels
• Structural collapse
• Fire and explosions
• Electrical hazards
• Domestic hygiene, including personal hygiene and food safety

"Fire and Explosions" Is Narrower Than It Looks

This is the provision most likely to catch out a landlord with flatted stock, and it is missing from most coverage of Phase 2.

The draft regulation 3(3)(b) inserts a new definition:

"excluded fire hazard" means a prescribed hazard where the risk of harm— (a) is associated with exposure to uncontrolled fire and associated smoke and fumes, and (b) arises from a deficiency in a FSO-regulated part of a building that contains two or more sets of domestic premises

Regulation 3(3)(c)(i) then inserts "that is not an excluded fire hazard" into the opening words of the definition of "relevant hazard" — above both the significant-hazard limb and the emergency-hazard limb. A hazard that is an excluded fire hazard is therefore outside Awaab's Law entirely, not merely outside Phase 2.

The GOV.UK Phase 2 guidance says the same thing in plainer terms:

Awaab's Law requirements do not apply to fire hazards in communal areas which are already covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, such as damaged fire doors, debris obstructing the means of escape or deficiencies in compartmentation.

Awaab's Law applies to fire hazards within individual flats and homes which are not currently covered by the FSO, for example, issues with broken or missing smoke alarms.

Two practical consequences:

• A classification rule that simply routes "fire" into Awaab's Law is over-broad. Triage has to ask where the deficiency sits — inside the dwelling, or in an FSO-regulated part of a building containing two or more dwellings.
• For communal fire hazards in blocks of flats, Phase 2 is subtractive, not additive. Those hazards can start a 24-hour emergency clock under Phase 1 today. From 30 November 2026 the carve-out removes them from Awaab's Law, and they are governed by the Fire Safety Order route instead — which is a different process with a different Responsible Person, not an absence of duty.

Damp and mould remains in scope throughout — Phase 2 adds to Phase 1 rather than replacing it.

Phase 3 will follow, extending the requirements to the remaining hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. GOV.UK describes it as covering "the remaining Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) hazards, excluding overcrowding". No date has been announced for Phase 3.

The Timescales Do Not Change

This is the good news for anyone already running a Phase 1 process. The clocks are the same ones you are already calculating:

Stage	Timescale
Investigate a significant hazard	10 working days
Investigate an emergency hazard	24 hours
Issue the written summary of findings	3 working days
Complete relevant safety work (significant hazard)	5 working days
Complete relevant safety work (emergency)	24 hours
Begin supplementary preventative work	5 working days
Long-stop for beginning supplementary work	12 weeks

A "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". Limbs (b) and (c) are separate because Christmas Day and Good Friday are common-law holidays in England and Wales rather than 1971 Act bank holidays. If you want to see how a given report date falls across those windows, the deadline calculator does the arithmetic including bank holidays.

What Actually Changes On The Day

The obligations are familiar. The volume is not.

Under Phase 1, a report only starts a statutory clock if it concerns damp and mould, or if it is an emergency. Most repair reports do neither, so most never enter the Awaab's Law process at all.

From 30 November, a report of a loose stair tread, a failed heating system in December, a scorched socket, or a broken extractor fan in a bathroom can all start a statutory clock — if the hazard presents a significant risk of harm. The judgement about which reports cross that threshold has to be made quickly and consistently, because the 10-working-day investigation clock starts from awareness, not from the point at which someone gets round to classifying it.

One thing the instrument settles that is easy to worry about: awareness before 30 November 2026 does not start a Phase 2 clock. Regulation 5 amends the transitional provision so that the "relevant time" is "30th November 2026 in relation to a significant hazard where the risk of harm is associated with a matter or circumstance referred to in paragraph 2, 3, 14A, 18A, 21, 22, 23, 23A or 29 of Schedule 1" — while damp, mould and emergency hazards keep their 27 October 2025 date. Open cases in the added categories are not retrospectively in breach on day one.

Three consequences follow, and they are operational rather than legal:

1. Triage becomes the control point. Every inbound report now needs an assessment of whether it is a significant hazard. Get that wrong in the cautious direction and you flood the process; get it wrong the other way and you miss a statutory deadline without knowing a clock was running.
2. Awareness capture has to be reliable across every channel. Day zero is the moment the landlord became aware. If that timestamp is reconstructed later, the audit trail is weak before the case has properly started.
3. Caseload arithmetic changes shape. A provider tracking a handful of live damp cases may find itself tracking many times that number across seven hazard categories, each with its own set of working-day windows.

For the full compliance workflow across the six deadline stages, see our step-by-step guide to complying with Awaab's Law. For the evidence each stage needs to leave behind, see our guide to Awaab's Law record-keeping and the audit trail.

Common Questions

When does Awaab's Law Phase 2 start? 30 November 2026, per the amending regulations and the GOV.UK Phase 2 guidance published in July 2026.

Is Phase 2 law yet? The commencement date is confirmed and the guidance is published, but the amending instrument had not yet been made at the time of writing. Plan for 30 November 2026 and confirm the current status on GOV.UK before citing it formally.

Does Phase 2 replace Phase 1? No. It extends the same duties to more hazards, on the same timescales. It does change the definitions those duties hang on: "significant risk of harm" becomes a 15-working-day reasonable-landlord test, and a new "excluded fire hazard" carve-out takes FSO-regulated communal fire hazards out of scope. Damp, mould and emergency hazards stay in scope.

Do the deadlines change? No. The 24-hour, 10-working-day, 3-working-day, 5-working-day and 12-week periods all carry over.

Does Phase 2 apply to private landlords? Not directly — Awaab's Law applies to social housing in England. See does Awaab's Law apply to private landlords for the position on the private rented sector.

What about Scotland and Northern Ireland? Scotland is introducing its own equivalent on a separate timetable. See our guide on whether Awaab's Law applies in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Where To Start

You have a fixed date and roughly three months. The sequence that tends to work for providers under 5,000 units:

1. Confirm which of the seven added hazard categories realistically appear in your stock and your repair history — and, for fire, whether the deficiency sits inside the dwelling or in an FSO-regulated communal part.
2. Decide, in writing, how a report gets classified as a significant hazard — and who makes that call when the person who normally makes it is on leave.
3. Check that awareness timestamps are captured at the point of receipt on every channel, including out-of-hours.
4. Work out what your caseload looks like if the last twelve months of repair reports had been assessed under Phase 2 rules. That number is the real planning input.

Work through the case lifecycle with the compliance checklist, and check which phase covers a given hazard with the phase checker.

Tracking a handful of damp cases in a spreadsheet is manageable. Tracking seven hazard categories across a full caseload, each with its own working-day windows and its own evidence trail, is the problem HazardClock is being built to solve — join the waitlist for early access.

This is general guidance for UK registered providers and social landlords, not legal advice. 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: 2 September 2026.

Sources

• Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, reg 1 — legislation.gov.uk
• Awaab's Law Phase 2: Guidance for social landlords — GOV.UK
• Awaab's Law in the social rented sector — GOV.UK
• Amendment Regulations 2026, reg 3 (definitions — 15 working days, excluded fire hazard) — legislation.gov.uk
• Amendment Regulations 2026, reg 4 (meaning of "work") — legislation.gov.uk
• Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025 (SI 2025/1042) — legislation.gov.uk
• SI 2025/1042 reg 2 — definition of "working day" — legislation.gov.uk
• SI 2025/1042 reg 3 — definitions of significant, emergency and relevant hazard — legislation.gov.uk