Awaab's Law Phase 2 brings seven new hazard categories under the same statutory deadlines that have applied to damp and mould since October 2025. What changes with Phase 2 isn't the deadlines themselves, it's the range of jobs a repairs team now has to recognise, triage, and evidence against them.

Where this guide picks up

The law itself, including who it applies to, the full timescales table, the three enforcement routes, and the general preparation steps, is covered in our guide to Awaab's Law Phase 2. This picks up from there: once a report comes in under one of the seven new hazard categories, what happens at the job level to meet the clock.

One line on the clock: a significant hazard gives you 10 working days to investigate, 3 working days after that to send the tenant a written summary, and 5 working days from the investigation concluding to begin the safety works, with any supplementary works to follow within 12 weeks at the latest.

How a report becomes a job

Every report, whatever the hazard, goes through the same triage decision before anything else happens: is this in scope of Awaab's Law at all, and if so, is it an emergency hazard or a significant hazard?

The test set out in the guidance is whether a reasonable landlord could make the hazard safe within 24 hours (emergency) or within 15 working days total, the 10-day investigation plus the 5-day safety works period combined (significant). If a hazard genuinely can't be made safe inside that window, a structural defect needing major works, for example, it can fall outside Awaab's Law scope entirely, though the landlord's wider repairing obligations still apply.

At job creation, that means capturing enough to answer:

• Which of the seven hazard categories does this fall under, and could it plausibly sit in more than one, a structural issue causing excess cold, for example?
• Is there an immediate risk to anyone in the property right now, which would make it an emergency?
• Who's in the household, and does anyone's vulnerability change how urgently this needs treating?
• Has this exact issue been reported before at this property?

Getting this right at the point the job is logged is what sets the clock correctly from the start. A hazard triaged as significant when it should have been emergency, or logged against the wrong category, starts the right deadline against the wrong assumption, and that gap tends to surface only when someone's checking compliance after the fact.

Excess cold

Inadequate heating, insulation, or ventilation leaving a home below a safe temperature, most acute where a vulnerable occupant lives there. The landlord isn't responsible for a tenant's energy bills, and a fault in a third-party-owned system, a freeholder's district heating, for instance, falls outside the social landlord's own Awaab's Law duty, though they should still chase the responsible party.

A reasonable landlord would treat an elderly tenant's boiler failing in January, with no heating in the home, as an emergency hazard rather than significant, given the age-related risk and the total loss of heating in cold weather, which triggers the 24-hour clock rather than the 10-day one.

Excess heat

This only comes into scope where a defect is making things worse, a broken window that won't open, a communal heating system stuck on with no way to switch it off. Heat caused solely by hot weather, with no defect involved, is out of scope entirely.

A tenant with a long-term respiratory condition lives in a top-floor flat where the only opening window is jammed shut. During a heatwave, the trapped heat makes their condition worse. Because there's a genuine defect combined with a vulnerable occupant, this is in scope and likely an emergency. If the window worked fine and the flat was simply hot because the weather was hot, it would fall outside Awaab's Law entirely.

Falls

Three distinct sub-types with their own thresholds: on the level (including baths and showers, and level changes up to 300mm), on stairs (over 300mm, including ramps and fire escapes), and between levels (over 300mm, including windows, balconies, and basement wells). A fall from a tenant's own ladder misuse, or from DIY work done in breach of their tenancy, is out of scope.

Structural collapse and falling elements

Covers cracking, sagging, or loose elements that could fall or give way. Known-inherent-weakness construction, Large Panel System buildings are the named example, can fall outside scope entirely if a genuine repair needs longer than 15 working days. Minor or superficial cracking with no collapse risk is out of scope too.

Cracking appears suddenly where a balcony meets the building on an upper floor. Given the height and the likelihood of serious injury if it gave way, this would be treated as an emergency. Contrast that with a rotting garden fence at a ground-floor property, unsightly and due for replacement, but with low likelihood of harm and a genuine repair timeline beyond 15 working days, which sits outside Awaab's Law and goes through ordinary repairs instead.

Fire and explosion risks

Covers hazards inside individual homes only. Fire safety issues in communal areas of a block of flats, a damaged fire door in a shared corridor, go through the Fire Safety Order and the building's Responsible Person instead, not through this route. Most hazards reported here are likely to be treated as emergencies given what typically gets reported, a broken smoke alarm, a suspected gas leak. A gas smell goes to the National Gas Helpline immediately. Residential evacuation plans (RPEEPs) aren't required to Awaab's Law timescales.

Electrical hazards

Where an EICR has taken place, its classification codes drive the triage directly: C1 (danger present, immediate action) and C2 (potentially dangerous, urgent) point toward an emergency hazard; C3 (improvement recommended, installation still satisfactory) sits outside Awaab's Law and goes into general maintenance instead. Where Awaab's Law's own timeline is shorter than the statutory 5-yearly inspection cycle for a given issue, the shorter one applies. Appliances that aren't part of the building are out of scope, though fire risk from things like lithium-ion batteries still needs managing.

An EICR on an occupied property comes back with a C2 observation, potentially dangerous, urgent remedial action required, at a property with a pregnant tenant. The urgency of the code combined with the vulnerability points toward treating this as an emergency rather than folding it into the next scheduled inspection cycle three years from now.

Domestic hygiene, personal hygiene, and food safety

One combined category, covering pest infestation, drainage and sanitation failure, inadequate waste storage, and kitchen or bathroom conditions that can't be kept clean. Pest presence specifically counts toward mental health impact in the government's own triage examples, not just physical risk. General clutter or untidiness with no associated pest, contamination, or odour issue is out of scope. The guidance's own instruction here is worth keeping: prioritise action to keep residents safe, rather than looking to apportion blame.

The evidence pack that feeds the three-day written summary

Whichever category a hazard falls under, the evidence captured in the table above needs to land against the job record as it's gathered, not reconstructed afterwards from a notebook or a text chain. Joblogic's job management and mobile forms capture photos, findings, and completed compliance checklists directly against the job as the visit happens, so the office has what it needs to write the three-day summary the moment the investigation closes.

One thing the summary itself needs that the hazard tables don't cover: a clear note of the planned timeline for any supplementary works, since that's what the tenant is actually owed in writing, not just confirmation that something was found.

Subcontractors: who owns each clock

Phase 2 hazards spread across more trades than Phase 1 ever did. A single property might need a heating engineer for excess cold, an electrician for electrical hazards, and a pest control specialist for a hygiene issue, often from three different subcontractors, sometimes for the same tenant in the same month.

A contractor delay is not a valid defence against a missed deadline. What that means in practice is that every subcontractor's own response time needs to sit inside the statutory clock with room to spare, not up against it. If the investigation has to conclude within 10 working days, a subcontractor who reports back on day 9 leaves the office no time to prepare the written summary due on day 13. The buffer has to be built into the subcontractor's contracted SLA, not assumed.

That makes a documented agreement per subcontractor, covering response time, evidence format, and escalation if they miss it, as necessary here as it is for any other compliance-driven contract work, our guide to SLA management covers how to set those terms.

The practical risk with multiple subcontractors on the same property is the same fragmentation problem that shows up anywhere compliance work is split across trades: one contractor's evidence sits in their own system, another's arrives by email, and nobody has a single view of which hazard, at which property, is closest to breaching.

How Joblogic supports it

Most of what Phase 2 asks for already happens in the sections above, the question is whether it happens in one system or three. Job Tracking gives each hazard its own SLA countdown from the moment it's logged, so a significant hazard's 10-day investigation window and a subcontractor's response time sit on the same screen rather than in separate trackers. Where a hazard is contracted out, the Subcontractor Portal keeps that engineer's compliance documents, job assignment, and evidence in the same record as any in-house work at the same property, so a Contract Manager isn't checking one place for electrical work and another for pest control on the same tenant's file.

That matters most on the hazards most likely to involve more than one trade, fire and electrical hazards together, or excess cold sitting alongside a structural issue, where the deadline is the same regardless of how many contractors are involved.

Getting ready for 30 November

A single-site landlord dealing mostly with damp and mould will feel Phase 2 less than a large portfolio juggling all seven hazard categories across several subcontractors at once, so what needs to change in your own triage process between now and 30 November depends on which end of that range you're on.

If you want to see how Joblogic supports the hazard-by-hazard side of Awaab's Law Phase 2, book a demo and we'll walk you through it.

Frequently asked questions

How many hazard categories does Awaab's Law Phase 2 add?

Seven: excess cold, excess heat, falls, structural collapse, fire and explosions, electrical hazards, and domestic hygiene (which covers personal hygiene and food safety as one combined category).

Can a hazard fall outside Awaab's Law scope entirely?

Yes. If a reasonable landlord couldn't make it safe within 24 hours (emergency) or 15 working days (significant), it falls outside scope, though the landlord's wider repairing obligations still apply. Large-scale structural work needed on a known-weakness building type is the example most likely to trigger this.

What's the difference between safety works and supplementary works?

Safety works are the immediate steps that remove or reduce the risk, often temporary, a heater, a barrier, isolating a faulty circuit. Supplementary works are the permanent fix that stops the hazard recurring, and must begin within 5 working days of the investigation concluding, or within 12 weeks at the latest if that isn't achievable.