Round Table Review 15 BUILDING
INSIGHTS LIVE
Reviewing Progress on Awaab’s Law & The Social Housing Act
A
waab’s Law, the fi rst part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, was brought into force in October 2025, bringing in a new regime for managing and addressing property hazards. Initially focusing on damp
and mould, the legally-enforced regulation will eventually be broadened to encompass the full list of 29 hazards in the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHRS), and therefore be a fundamental shiſt for virtually all aspects of managing social housing conditions. Having staged a Building Insights LIVE round table round table in March
2025 on the likely impacts of the new regulation, we recently brought experts from the sector together once again to discuss how compliance was working in practice. Including several delegates from 2025, the group of consultants, experts working in moisture in buildings, supply chain representatives, and social housing providers, shared practical approaches and solutions for compliance with Awaab’s Law. T is round table was sponsored by Tarmac, Cornerstone Management
Services, and Ubbink, who all posed questions and solutions to the group from their respective positions in the industry, from helping open up discussion on alternative measures, to helping engage tenants and tackling skills issues. Recommendations from 2025’s event were reviewed, included better
application and more standardisation of property data, what ‘making properties safe’ means in practice, and the need for greater education on the practicalities. T e key to success, once Awaab’s Law had fully bedded in, would be to move
from a focus on reacting to the new timeframes for addressing hazards, to a much more proactive approach to planned maintenance, supported by open communication with residents. Delegates called for a strategic vision from the Government that would enable
the industry to coalesce around solutions, and avoid a ‘race to the bottom’ with the emergence of a new Decent Homes Standard, with the focus being put on tackling hazards. Landlords needed to be ‘incentivised’ to have a robust maintenance strategy, said Dale Holroyd of ZapCarbon, and fellow returning delegate from 2025, Sarah Garry of the Property Care Association again advocated looking at the building as a ‘system.’ She said landlords “have lots of diff erent regulations that don’t work together systemically,” meaning a piecemeal approach was dangerous, and more individual holistic strategies were essential. A message reiterated from the 2025 event was the need to put codesign with
residents higher up the agenda, as a means to proactively bring customers ‘along for the ride,’ and help them understand, for example, why decants may be needed. But this year, there was greater focus on harnessing the power of sharing data to help social housing management deal with hazards, but also comply eff ectively with their requirements.
COLLECTIVE EFFORT The round table of sector representatives, product suppliers and building experts pushed for more collaborative eff ort on understanding buildings
Housing Management & Maintenance Spring 2026
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