Damp and mould generated the most significant housing law reform of the decade, and it applies in one of the two countries this site covers.
Awaab’s Law is England-only
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 extended Awaab’s Law to the private rented sector in England, imposing statutory timescales to investigate and remedy prescribed hazards. Housing is devolved. Awaab’s Law does not apply in Wales, and no Welsh equivalent with fixed timescales has been made.
A Welsh landlord reading English coverage will believe a clock is running that is not. A Welsh contract-holder reading the same coverage will believe they have a remedy in that form, and they do not.
What Wales has instead, and it is not nothing
Wales gets to the same subject matter through the contract rather than through a duty imposed on the landlord from outside it.
Section 91 — fitness for human habitation
Section 91 of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 implies into every occupation contract a term that the dwelling is fit for human habitation, judged against the 29 matters in the 2022 Regulations. It cannot be contracted out of and the contract-holder does not have to invoke it — it is a term of their contract. See fitness for human habitation in Wales.
Section 92 — the repairing obligation
Section 92 implies the obligation to keep in repair the structure and exterior, and the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, space heating and heating water. It is the Welsh analogue of section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, restated inside the occupation contract.
No clock, but sharper consequences
The trade-off is real and worth stating both ways.
- Wales has no fixed timescale. There is no "investigate within 14 days" duty. The standard is the general one: put right within a reasonable time of knowing, or of when you ought to have known.
- But the claim is contractual and direct. The contract-holder sues on their own contract for breach of an implied term. They do not need the council to act first, and there is no enforcement discretion in the way.
- Rent may not be payable for periods the dwelling was unfit, in the circumstances the Act defines.
- Possession is affected. An unfit dwelling interacts with the compliance preconditions for a section 173 notice, and section 217 lets the court refuse possession where notice followed a disrepair complaint.
The council retains its Housing Act 2004 powers in parallel — the HHSRS, improvement notices, prohibition orders — exactly as in England.
What this means in practice
Date everything. With no statutory clock, "within a reasonable time" is judged on your record: when the report came in, what you did, when you did it. A landlord with dated notes is arguing about reasonableness; a landlord without them is arguing about whether they knew.
Notice is notice, however informal. A text, a remark at an inspection you wrote down, a message from a neighbour. The obligation runs from when you knew or ought to have known.
The two conditions of fitness bite hardest. No valid EICR, or no working interlinked alarms, and the dwelling is unfit as a matter of law regardless of its condition otherwise.
Dates are the defence. Landlord HQ holds certificate and alarm records per property with the date each was evidenced. Check what applies to yours.
Information tool, not legal advice. Take advice on a specific disrepair matter.