The Government confirmed in July that seven further hazard categories come under the same statutory deadlines from the end of November, the day winter effectively begins.
On 13 July 2026 the Government confirmed that the second phase of Awaab's Law will come into force on 30 November 2026. Phase 1, in force since October 2025, covered damp and mould and emergency hazards. Phase 2 extends the same framework of fixed statutory deadlines to seven further categories drawn from the Housing Health and Safety Rating System.
Those categories are excess cold and excess heat, falls, structural collapse, fire and explosions, electrical hazards, and domestic and personal hygiene and food safety. In other words, a great deal of what a housing provider deals with day to day now sits inside a legally enforceable clock.
The deadlines themselves are unchanged in shape. Emergency hazards must be responded to within 24 hours. Significant but non emergency hazards must be investigated within 10 working days, with a written summary of findings to the resident within three working days of that investigation, urgent safety works completed within five working days, and longer term remedial works begun within 12 weeks.
The timing is unhelpful for anyone not already prepared, because excess cold is on the list and the duty begins as winter starts. Providers across London, Kent, Essex and the wider Home Counties are carrying a great deal of pre-1980 stock where thermal performance and ventilation were never designed to current expectations, and those are exactly the properties that generate excess cold and damp and mould reports together. Anyone who built their response around Phase 1 alone will find both the volume and the variety of qualifying reports rises sharply, and the investigation stage is where most programmes will be tested first.
Phase 1 was the warning. Anyone who treated it as a damp and mould exercise and stopped there is about to find out how much wider this goes. Excess cold, fire, electrical, structural, and the clock starts on the thirtieth of November with winter right behind it. You cannot inspect your way out of that in week one. The providers who cope will be the ones who sorted their process out before the deadline, not after the first complaint lands.
