Awaab's Law: What Private Renters Can Claim

Awaab's Law is not a brand new piece of legislation sitting on its own. It sits inside the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and introduces strict, legally binding timescales for how quickly landlords must respond to hazards in your home.

The core requirements work in three stages. First, your landlord must begin investigating a reported hazard within 14 days of being told about it. Second, if the hazard is an emergency (a gas leak, a structural collapse, or a boiler failure in winter), they must start work within 24 hours. Third, once they have investigated a non-emergency hazard and confirmed it exists, they must complete the repair within a reasonable period.

The law covers damp, mould, and other health hazards assessed under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. So if you have black mould spreading across your bedroom ceiling and you report it in writing, your landlord has 14 days to investigate. If they do nothing, they are in breach.

Put simply: the law turns "the landlord should fix this" into "the landlord must fix this by a specific date or face enforcement action."

Before Awaab's Law, forcing a landlord to act on disrepair was slow and expensive. You could report a hazard, get ignored, and then face months of letters and tribunal proceedings before anything happened. The new timescales compress that timeline and shift the pressure onto the landlord. See our article on how to claim compensation from your landlord in the UK for a wider view of disrepair claims.

Awaab's Law is being extended to the private rented sector in England from late 2026, implemented through the Renters' Rights Act 2025 (LetCompliance, 2026).

If you are a private tenant in England, the law will apply to your tenancy. It does not matter whether you rent from an individual landlord, a letting agent, or a larger property company. The obligations attach to the property and the landlord, not to the type of organisation doing the renting.

One thing to be clear about: the law applies from the point it comes into force for the private sector. It does not retrospectively apply to hazards you reported years ago. But if you reported damp last month and your landlord still hasn't responded, document that report carefully, because the new rules will give you a much stronger position the moment they apply to your tenancy.

If you are in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, the rules differ. Awaab's Law as described here applies to England only.

For a broader picture of what the Renters' Rights Act 2025 changes for private tenants, see our article on what tenants can claim under the Renters Rights Act 2025.

Awaab's Law gives you a mechanism to force action and, if your landlord breaches the timescales, to pursue compensation. Here is what that looks like in practice.

If your landlord fails to investigate within 14 days or fails to start emergency repairs within 24 hours, you have grounds to report them to your local council's environmental health team. The council can issue an improvement notice and, if the landlord continues to ignore it, pursue prosecution. Fines for non-compliance can reach £40,000 (Gov.uk, 2026).

Beyond council enforcement, you can bring a civil claim against your landlord for breach of the implied repairing obligations under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, combined now with the specific timescale breaches Awaab's Law creates. If the disrepair has caused you loss (damage to your belongings, health effects, or simply having to live in a property that is not fit for purpose), you can claim compensation for that loss.

The amount you can claim depends on the severity and duration of the problem. Courts have awarded tenants a percentage reduction on rent paid during the period of disrepair. On a £1,500 per month rent, even a 25% reduction for six months of ignored damp would be £2,250. Cases involving health effects attract higher awards.

You can also explore whether your landlord's failure to act constitutes a breach that triggers other rights, including rent repayment. Our guide to how to apply for a Rent Repayment Order in the UK covers that separately, as it involves different qualifying conditions.

Reporting the problem correctly is not a formality. It is the thing that starts the legal clock.

Awaab's Law timescales begin when the landlord is notified of the hazard. A WhatsApp message saying "there's a bit of mould" does not create the same legal record as a formal written notice describing the hazard, its location, and the date you are reporting it. Use email if you can, and keep a copy.

Your notice should include: the address and which room the hazard is in, a description of what you can see (black mould on the north wall, approximately 50cm x 30cm, present since October 2025), any photos attached, and a request that the landlord investigates within the statutory 14-day period.

If you have a tenancy agreement that specifies a different reporting method, follow that method as well. Covering both keeps you protected.

Keep a log. Every message you send, every response you get, and every date matters if this ends up in front of a tribunal or a council enforcement officer.

If your landlord does not respond within 14 days, you have two parallel routes: contact your local council's environmental health department and begin building a formal claim. You do not have to choose one or the other. Both can run simultaneously.

Remedy Legal can help you draft the initial formal notice to your landlord, with the relevant legislation cited correctly. The platform generates letters with AI assistance and reviews them for legal accuracy, so you are not starting from a blank page.

The 14-day deadline is not advisory. If your landlord misses it, the breach is documented from that point forward.

Start with a formal letter before action. This tells your landlord you are aware of the breach, you intend to escalate, and you are giving them a final opportunity to respond. A well-drafted letter before action resolves a significant number of disrepair disputes without going further. Landlords who have ignored texts sometimes respond very differently to a letter that cites specific legislation and names a claim value.

If the letter produces nothing, your next steps are reporting to the council's environmental health team and filing a claim. Environmental health can inspect the property, issue an improvement notice, and ultimately prosecute the landlord. This process costs you nothing and often moves faster than a civil claim.

For compensation, you will need to file a civil claim. Depending on the amount, this goes through the small claims track (up to £10,000) or the fast track. The evidence you have gathered (photos, correspondence, reports, rent payment records) becomes your case.

The Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman is another route for certain complaints. See our guide on Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman complaints for when that route applies and how to use it.

Remedy Legal gives you a Negotiation Dashboard that uses data from similar past cases to estimate your claim value and the probability of success. That information changes how you approach the negotiation, because you are not guessing what a reasonable settlement looks like.

Awaab's Law sits alongside a set of existing rights that private renters already have, and the Renters' Rights Act 2025 adds several more on top.

On disrepair, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 already obliges landlords to keep the structure and exterior of your home in repair, and to maintain installations for heating, hot water, and sanitation. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 added the requirement that rented properties remain fit for human habitation throughout the tenancy. Serious damp and mould typically fails that test.

Awaab's Law adds the timescale mechanism on top. It does not replace your existing rights. It adds teeth.

Separately, if your landlord has failed to comply with other regulatory requirements (an unlicensed HMO, for example, or a missing gas safety certificate), you may have grounds for a Rent Repayment Order regardless of the disrepair issue. Those claims can be worth up to 12 months' rent. Remedy Legal's Landlord Assessment checks your landlord's compliance across these areas and identifies whether you have an RRO claim.

On the Section 21 front, the Renters' Rights Act 2025 ends no-fault evictions from 1 May 2026. If your landlord tries to use a Section 21 notice to get rid of you after you've complained about disrepair, that notice will not be valid. See our piece on what Section 21 ending means for your tenancy for the detail on that protection.

A claim lives or dies on evidence. The tenants who recover compensation are the ones who documented everything before they needed it.

From the moment you notice a hazard, photograph it. Date-stamp the photos by sending them to your own email. Note the size, location, and any visible damage to your belongings or the property structure. If the problem causes you health effects (asthma flare-ups, skin irritation), keep a brief diary and mention it to your GP so there is a medical record.

Save every piece of correspondence. Screenshots of WhatsApp messages, forwarded emails, voicemail transcriptions if you have them. If your landlord promises verbally to fix something, follow up in writing: "Thanks for confirming on the phone today that you'll have someone look at the mould by Friday."

If you get a council environmental health inspection, keep the report. That report is independent professional evidence of the hazard's existence and severity, and it carries significant weight in a tribunal.

Remedy Legal's Tribunal Bundle Generation feature helps you upload and annotate this evidence, track deadlines, and produce the final submission bundle. If your claim reaches a tribunal, you are not assembling a folder the night before. The bundle is already built.

For broader guidance on spotting what your landlord may have violated beyond disrepair, the article on UK tenant rights and landlord violations is worth reading.