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Part of the VHL Group, Trusted Since 1992
Most maintenance contracts in social housing were written before Awaab’s Law existed. The SLAs in them were built for operational efficiency, cost control, and the realities of running a contractor relationship at portfolio scale. None of them were written with section 10A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 in mind.
As Awaab’s Law Phase 2 comes into force during 2026, those contracts are about to be tested against a regulatory framework they were never designed to satisfy. A four-hour emergency response window in a typical maintenance contract used to be a procurement preference. Under Phase 2, it is the floor of a legal obligation that flows up from the tenant, through the landlord, into the contract itself.
If you are renewing a contract, going to tender, or reviewing what your current contractor has committed to in writing, this article sets out what to look for. The clauses below are the ones that materially affect a landlord’s ability to demonstrate Awaab’s Law compliance, ordered by how often they are missing from the contracts I see.
Before October 2025, the contract with the maintenance supplier was a commercial document. It defined scope, pricing, response times, reporting cadence, and the basis for performance management. If the contractor under-delivered against an SLA, the landlord had a contractual remedy. If the underperformance caused harm, the tenant might have a separate negligence claim, but the contract itself was not the primary legal instrument.
Awaab’s Law changes the architecture. Under section 10A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the social landlord is legally required to investigate and resolve reported hazards within prescribed timeframes. The landlord cannot delegate that legal obligation to a contractor, but the practical mechanism through which the landlord meets it is the contractor’s response. If the contractor takes 48 hours to attend a heating failure in a property with vulnerable occupants, the landlord has breached Awaab’s Law, regardless of what the maintenance contract says about response time.
This means the contract has stopped being a commercial document and started being part of the landlord’s compliance evidence chain. What it commits the contractor to, in writing, is now what the landlord will be asked to produce when the regulator investigates. A contract that commits to a 4-hour emergency response, supported by a contractor whose actual performance is 24 hours, is a worse position than no contract at all, because the gap between what is written and what is delivered is itself documented evidence of failure.
The contract is no longer the procurement team’s instrument. It is the compliance team’s instrument.
The clauses below are the ones that, in my experience reviewing maintenance contracts across the social housing sector, are most often either missing, under-specified, or written in language that does not align with what Awaab’s Law expects. If your contract is silent on any of them, that is a procurement gap that needs closing before Phase 2 enforcement begins.
1.Emergency attendance window, specified by hazard category
A single “emergency response within X hours” clause is not sufficient. Awaab’s Law distinguishes between emergency hazards (24-hour make-safe requirement) and significant hazards (longer windows, but still mandatory). A good contract specifies attendance windows by hazard category, not as a single number.
Look for a clause that commits the contractor to attendance within four hours for any reported hazard that meets the Awaab’s Law emergency threshold, with the threshold defined explicitly. The four-hour number gives the landlord a margin of safety against the regulation’s 24-hour ceiling, accounting for the time taken from tenant report to contractor dispatch and from attendance to make-safe.
A contract that promises “emergency response” without a specific hour count is not a Phase 2 contract. A contract that specifies 24 hours is meeting the regulation’s floor with no operational margin, which is structurally indefensible if anything in the chain of communication delays the dispatch.
2.Out-of-hours, weekend, and bank holiday coverage
Awaab’s Law does not pause for Christmas, and the regulator will not accept a Monday morning attendance as evidence of compliance with a Saturday morning report. Yet a meaningful proportion of maintenance contracts treat out-of-hours response as a chargeable add-on, with reduced engineer availability, slower response times, and triage logic that defaults to next- business-day.
The contract should specify that the agreed emergency response window applies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with the same trade coverage and the same triage process as standard hours. If out-of-hours is contractually limited (different SLAs, different rates, different engineer availability), that is a structural Awaab’s Law exposure on every weekend and every bank holiday.
3.Vulnerability-aware triage
Awaab’s Law uses the phrase “significant risk of harm.” The risk threshold is materially higher when the property contains an elderly resident, a young child, someone with a respiratory condition, or any other person whose vulnerability changes the impact of a heating failure or a gas concern. A contractor whose response is identical regardless of who is in the property is not triaging to the standard the regulation expects.
The contract should require the contractor to identify vulnerability at the point of report (through tenant-facing intake questions and through landlord-supplied data), to log the vulnerability against the job, and to use the vulnerability data to drive attendance prioritisation. If two emergencies are reported simultaneously, the one in the vulnerable household should be attended first. If a contract is silent on vulnerability triage, that is a category of failure the regulator will look for directly.
4.Digital reporting at the point of work
Phase 2 requires the landlord to provide a written summary of findings to the tenant within three working days of investigation, and to retain a structured audit trail of every reported hazard, every attendance, every action taken, and every communication. A contractor whose reporting is paper-based, or whose digital reports are generated retrospectively from engineer notes, cannot reliably meet that window.
The contract should require the contractor to issue a digital job report on completion of every attendance, capturing the time of report, the time of attendance, the engineer’s findings, any safe-isolation actions, photographs of the hazard and the remediation, follow-up actions, and the communication issued to the tenant. The report should be timestamped at the point of work, not generated later from notes.
Ask the contractor what their average gap is between attendance and digital report availability. If the answer is more than 24 hours, the contract is exposed.
5.Access escalation protocol
A meaningful portion of Awaab’s Law breaches will not be caused by the contractor failing to attend. They will be caused by the contractor attending and being unable to gain access to the property. If the tenant is not at home, refuses access, or cannot be reached, the contractor needs a defined escalation protocol that documents the attempted attendance, communicates the access failure to the landlord, and triggers the next step within hours, not days.
The contract should specify what happens when access cannot be gained on first attempt. Specifically, the contractor’s obligation to make a documented attempt, to leave evidence of attendance, to communicate the access issue to the landlord within an agreed window, and to schedule a follow-up attempt within a defined timeframe. If the contract is silent on access failure, the landlord is exposed every time a tenant misses an appointment.
6. Subcontractor accountability
Many maintenance contracts permit the main contractor to subcontract trades to third parties, particularly electrical and specialist work. Under Awaab’s Law, the landlord’s legal obligation cannot be diluted by the contractor’s subcontracting decisions. The 24 hour attendance window applies whether the engineer is direct or subcontracted.
The contract should require the main contractor to take full accountability for subcontractor performance, including SLA compliance, digital reporting consistency, and audit trail completeness. The landlord should not be in a position where a subcontractor’s slow response, paper reporting, or missing audit trail creates an Awaab’s Law breach that the main contractor disclaims responsibility for.
7. Audit trail accessibility
The Regulator of Social Housing, when investigating an Awaab’s Law complaint, will ask the landlord to produce the audit trail. The landlord cannot defer to the contractor and ask for a fortnight to compile it. The audit trail should be accessible on demand, ideally through a portal or shared system that the landlord can query directly without going through the contractor.
The contract should require the contractor to maintain a landlord-accessible audit trail of all jobs, with the ability to filter by property, by hazard category, by date range, and by SLA performance.
If the audit trail lives only inside the contractor’s internal systems, accessible only by request, the landlord cannot defend itself in real time.
8. Performance reporting and SLA compliance evidence
Awaab’s Law enforcement actions will look at patterns, not just individual incidents. A single missed attendance is a problem. A pattern of missed attendances over six months is evidence that the landlord’s compliance programme is structurally inadequate. The contract should require the contractor to produce monthly SLA compliance reports, showing actual performance against contracted timeframes, broken down by hazard category, with explanations for any breaches.
This is the clause that turns the contract from a defensive instrument into a proactive compliance tool. If you do not have monthly evidence of SLA performance, you cannot identify pattern failures before they become enforcement actions.
Every clause above adds cost. A contractor committing to a four-hour emergency window across 24/7 coverage, with vulnerability-aware triage, real-time digital reporting, and a landlord- accessible audit trail, is operating a structurally more expensive service than a contractor who is not. There is no way around this. The compliance infrastructure that Awaab’s Law requires is not a free upgrade.
Procurement teams reviewing maintenance contracts in 2026 will face a choice they did not have to make before October 2025: pay more for a contractor whose operating model is structurally Phase 2 ready, or accept a lower price from a contractor whose operating model creates ongoing legal exposure that the landlord absorbs directly.
VHL Mechanical’s social housing SLA framework is built against the Phase 2 requirements rather than retrofitted to them. Standard contracts commit to four-hour emergency attendance across 24/7 coverage, with vulnerability data captured at the property level and surfaced in triage. Every job produces a timestamped digital report at the point of work, with the audit trail accessible to landlords through a shared dashboard. SLA compliance is reported monthly, with explanations for any breaches and remediation actions tracked through to closure.
Across our active social housing contracts we maintain a 100% CP12 compliance rate, a 99% emergency attendance rate within four hours, and a 90-minute average response time across Greater London. The full operating model and the contract template that underpins it are available on request.
If you are reviewing or renewing a maintenance contract for a social housing portfolio and want to discuss what Phase 2-aligned SLA terms look like in practice, the team is available on 020 8102 9898 or via the contact form.
Q. What is the minimum emergency response time a contract should commit to under
Awaab’s Law?
A. The legal threshold is 24 hours to investigate and make safe. A defensible contract commits to a tighter window, typically four hours, to give the landlord operational margin against the regulation. Anything looser than four hours leaves no buffer for tenant communication, dispatch time, or unforeseen delays.
Q. Does the contractor’s SLA need to apply outside business hours?
A. Yes. Awaab’s Law applies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A contract that operates a different SLA for out-of-hours, weekends, or bank holidays creates structural exposure on every day the reduced SLA applies. The contract should specify identical attendance windows and triage standards regardless of time of day.
Q. Can the landlord delegate Awaab’s Law compliance to the contractor?
A. No. Under section 10A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the legal obligation sits with the landlord and cannot be transferred. The contractor is the practical mechanism through which the landlord meets the obligation. The contract is the evidence chain, not a transfer of liability.
Q. What happens if the contractor subcontracts a job to a third party?
A. The landlord’s legal obligation is unchanged. The main contractor should be required to take full accountability for subcontractor performance, including SLA compliance, digital reporting consistency, and audit trail completeness. If the contract permits subcontracting without these requirements, the landlord is exposed every time a subcontractor falls below the agreed standard.
Q. How often should a contractor provide SLA performance reporting?
A. Monthly. Awaab’s Law enforcement looks at patterns over time, not just individual incidents. Monthly reporting with breakdown by hazard category, attendance window performance, and breach explanations is the minimum cadence that allows a landlord to spot pattern failures before they become enforcement actions.
Q. Should the contractor’s audit trail be accessible directly by the landlord?
A. Yes, ideally through a portal or shared system that the landlord can query without going through the contractor. The Regulator of Social Housing will not accept “awaiting the contractor’s report” as an explanation for missing evidence during an investigation. Direct, real-time access to the audit trail is increasingly the standard expectation.
Malika Khan is Head of Business Strategy, Commercial Systems & Technology at VHL Mechanical, where she leads the commercial systems and compliance technology programme across heating, gas safety, and mechanical maintenance contracts for social housing, local authorities, and commercial estates across London. She works directly with housing associations, ALMOs, facilities managers, and procurement teams on the operational systems that underpin Awaab’s Law readiness, CP12 compliance, and SLA-backed delivery.
VHL Mechanical is a Gas Safe registered, ISO 9001 certified contractor based in Harrow, serving social housing providers and commercial clients across Greater London. We are approved to operate under multiple social housing procurement frameworks.
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