By Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman
2025 will be a year of change for the social housing sector. From its response to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to the Decent Homes Standard, there are several government announcements that we’ll have to wait and see what the impact will be.
But one law we know is coming and in what form is Awaab’s Law. Whilst regulations are yet to be laid, landlords know they’re going to have to improve when it comes to dealing with hazards.
Just last month we published a report containing cases that once again should shock landlords into ensuring it’s not them named next time. We covered cases of children at risk from exposed electrical wires or falling through holes in floors large enough for them to fit. Older people experiencing temperatures of 35°C because of faulty boilers. Dead rats making someone’s home uninhabitable or reports of skin conditions because of contaminated water.
Despite the seriousness of the failings in this report, these hazards can go unresolved for months and years. In several cases, repairs were unresolved at the point of the ombudsman’s decision and in one case the landlord mishandled the local authority’s improvement notice.
When publishing this report I said it showed a degree of complacency when responding to hazards. When the statutory framework has been around for 20 years, why is this the case? Why does the sector need another piece of legislation to tell it how to respond effectively to what can be serious situations? In waiting for new measures, landlords shouldn’t lose sight of the fact there’s already sufficient statute in place to handle these issues with more urgency.
Therefore, right now landlords should be assuring themselves they can deliver robust action on hazards, and doing so will make them better prepared for Awaab’s Law.
“It shouldn’t be for the resident to phone up to report a hazard so that the landlord can identify it”
One fundamental flaw in the sector’s current approach is a failure to risk assess and triage cases effectively – something many landlords in our report said they were fixing following our determinations.
Hazards are assessed based on the circumstances of the household – age, health, vulnerabilities – and omitting triaging could result in hazards being missed. Landlords should consider this point as they develop plans for Awaab’s Law.
Secondly, are we confident as a sector that all landlords are being sufficiently proactive in identifying hazards? It shouldn’t be for the resident to phone up to report a hazard so that the landlord can identify it – it’s for the resident to report a problem such as pests, electrics or asbestos and for the landlord to think whether it’s a statutory hazard or not. And to do so without waiting for action from Environmental Health.
Following on from this, I’ve seen a pattern in the last few months of improvement notices for the most serious hazards being mishandled by landlords. This mustn’t be allowed to become a theme we see in our casework.
To end, here are some practical lessons and challenges for landlords. What does your oversight, monitoring, records and communication look like when you’re tackling hazards? Have you connected the dots between a hazard in one property and others in a block? Do you have the right and proportionate approach to temporary moves? And how can you deal with a complex hazardous situation when there’s a breakdown in trust?
Taking action on these lessons will help landlords deliver that basic human right of a warm, safe and decent home.
