Damp and mould: the landlord's legal responsibility
What landlords are legally required to do about damp and mould in 2026: duties under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 and the HHSRS, the shift brought by Awaab's Law, what counts as a hazard, and how to respond properly.
Damp and mould used to be treated as a low-priority repair, the kind of thing that sat on a list until a tenant chased it twice. That is no longer a safe position to hold. The death of Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old who died in 2020 from prolonged exposure to mould in a Rochdale flat, changed both the law and the way courts and regulators view inaction. This guide sets out what a landlord must actually do, where the legal duties come from, and what a proper response looks like in 2026.
Where the duty comes from
There is no single damp-and-mould statute. The obligation is built from several overlapping sources.
The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018
This Act inserts an implied term into nearly all residential tenancies in England: the property must be fit for human habitation at the start of and throughout the tenancy. Fitness is assessed against the matters in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which expressly include freedom from damp and from the prescribed hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System.
The important features for landlords:
- A tenant can take the landlord to court directly, without going through the local authority first.
- The remedies are an order to carry out works and damages.
- The duty is ongoing, not a one-off at the start of the tenancy.
The HHSRS
The Housing Health and Safety Rating System is the risk-assessment framework local authorities use to judge housing conditions. Damp and mould growth is one of its 29 hazards. Where an inspection finds a Category 1 hazard (the most serious), the authority has a duty to act and can serve an improvement notice, a prohibition order, or carry out emergency remedial action. Category 2 hazards give the authority a power to act.
Section 11 repairing obligations
The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 also requires landlords to keep the structure and exterior in repair, including the things that commonly cause penetrating and rising damp: roofs, gutters, downpipes, external walls, and window frames. If damp results from disrepair to any of these, the repairing duty is engaged regardless of fitness.
The shift after Awaab's Law
Awaab's Law is the biggest change in how these duties bite. Rather than leaving the timescale for a fix to be argued about after the event, it sets binding deadlines for responding to hazards, with damp and mould the first category in scope.
It has applied to social housing in England since 27 October 2025. The social-housing model runs on fixed windows: a landlord must investigate a reported hazard within a set period, begin repairs within a further set period, and act on an emergency hazard, one that poses a significant and imminent risk to health or safety, within 24 hours.
The Renters' Rights Act extends Awaab's Law to the private rented sector. The expected timing is from 2027, with the precise date and the exact private-sector timescales subject to further consultation. Alongside it, the Decent Homes Standard is being extended to private rentals, which sets a baseline condition every let home must meet. Two things follow for a private landlord reading this in 2026:
- The direction is settled even if the date is not. Plan for clock-based duties, not best-efforts repairs.
- The single most useful thing you can do today is record the date and time of every hazard report, because the deadlines run from the moment a tenant tells you, not the moment you get round to reading the message.
There is a fuller treatment of the timescales and operational setup in our Awaab's Law software overview, and the wider duty list in the 2026 compliance checklist.
What counts as a hazard
Not every patch of condensation is a reportable hazard, but the threshold is lower than many landlords assume. The HHSRS judges the likelihood of harm and the severity of the outcome, with extra weight given to vulnerable occupants. A flat with a child, an elderly resident, or someone with a respiratory condition will cross the threshold at a level of mould that might be tolerated elsewhere.
In practice you are looking for:
- Black mould growth on walls, ceilings, or around windows, especially if it recurs after cleaning.
- Persistent condensation that the household cannot control through normal ventilation and heating.
- Penetrating damp from a defect in the roof, walls, or rainwater goods.
- Rising damp where a damp-proof course has failed or is bridged.
- Musty smells, peeling paint, or staining that point to a moisture problem behind the surface.
The cause matters because it drives the fix, but it does not change whether you have to respond. A landlord who blames the tenant's lifestyle and does nothing is the position the law is built to defeat.
Tenant responsibility versus landlord responsibility
There is a genuine line here, but it is narrower than it is often claimed to be.
Tenants are expected to use the property in a tenant-like way: heat and ventilate within reason, report problems promptly, and not block airbricks or trickle vents. Where condensation is genuinely caused by severe overcrowding the tenant has created, or by deliberately disabling ventilation, that is relevant.
The landlord, though, remains responsible for the building's ability to stay dry and to ventilate. If the extractor fan is broken, the windows have no working vents, the insulation creates cold bridging, or the structure lets water in, the cause sits with the landlord, and the courts have repeatedly rejected the reflex of blaming "tenant lifestyle" for what is in fact a building defect. The safe assumption: investigate first, attribute blame later, and only after you have understood the actual cause.
How to respond properly
A defensible response has a recognisable shape, and it is worth running the same way every time.
Acknowledge and log immediately
Capture the report the moment it arrives, on whatever channel it came in, with a timestamp. If a tenant sends a photo of mould by WhatsApp at 9pm on a Saturday, that is when your clock starts, not Monday morning.
Investigate the cause, not just the symptom
Inspect the property and identify why the moisture is there. Cleaning the mould off and repainting without finding the source guarantees a return visit and a worse record. Note the cause, the severity, and any vulnerable occupants.
Agree and carry out a remediation plan
Fix the underlying cause: repair the leak, replace the fan, improve ventilation or insulation, treat and redecorate the affected surfaces. Keep the tenant informed of what will happen and when.
Keep the evidence
Record the report, the inspection, the plan, the works, and the completion, each with a date. If the matter is ever tested in court or by a local authority, this trail is your defence, and its absence is the claimant's case.
Treat emergencies as emergencies
Where the hazard poses a serious and imminent risk, particularly to a vulnerable occupant, act within 24 hours to make it safe even if the full repair takes longer.
A note on staying ahead of it
The pattern that gets landlords into trouble is not malice; it is a report that was logged late, lost in an inbox, or never timestamped. DwellBridge triages tenant hazard reports across WhatsApp, SMS, and email with a timestamp on every one, tracks the Awaab's Law response windows so the deadline is visible before it lapses, and uses AI agents to chase the contractor and update the tenant. See the compliance engine or the Awaab's Law software page.
