Awaab's Law: advice from the Regulatory Review Group

To: Màiri McAllan, Cabinet Secretary for Housing

From: Professor Russel Griggs OBE, Chair, Regulatory Review Group

Sent: 20 March 2026

I am writing as Chair of the Regulatory Review Group (RRG) to provide independent advice on proposed measures in the Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026, commonly known as Awaab’s Law. 

This note provides an overview of the RRG’s role and details recommendations on the engagement with landlords and tenants, the use of existing standards and communications considerations.

Regulatory Review Group (RRG) 

The independent RRG was re-established by the Scottish Government as part of the New Deal for Business to support Scottish Ministers in improving the regulatory environment for businesses and their involvement in that process. The RRG’s membership is detailed in the Annex. The RRG consider upcoming regulatory developments and as part of its work programme identified the proposed measures in the Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026.

The RRG’s objectives are to:

• work constructively with the Scottish Government to ensure that policy officials and relevant Ministers are sighted on implementation challenges with regulations early in development.
• deliver purposeful and targeted written and verbal advice to the Scottish Government, drawing upon extensive expert insight from business and regulators across Scotland.
• support the delivery of the New Deal for Business by ensuring that the potential barriers to the success of Scottish Government policies are removed through an improved understanding of the practicalities of implementation. 

The RRG’s remit is to examine and identify implementation challenges and appropriate mitigations of regulation. The RRG does not provide a view on the appropriateness of substantive policy or decisions to be taken on legislative priorities. 

Investigation and Commencement of Repair (Scotland) Regulations 2026 

Along with RRG members, I met with your officials on Wednesday 25 February 2026. Your officials provided an insightful update on the progress made with regard to the proposed regulations and provided detailed responses to our questions. We welcome this engagement with your officials as they make progress. The proposed regulations seek to ensure vital protection for tenants from damp and mould in their homes, and to seek to ensure that tenants, and their families, can live in safer accommodation. It is in the spirit of supporting that endeavour that this advice is provided. 

The following recommendations have been made by the RRG for consideration as part of the policy development and legislative process: 

• the cumulative impact of regulations on businesses will be significant and could deter many from joining the sector, and indeed cause landlords to leave the market. Further thought will need to be given to the sequencing of these regulations with regard to other upcoming policies with an impact on housing in the social rented sector, private sector or both. In conjunction with officials, RRG members have considered this in detail over the past year and this work should continue. As plans for the new housing regulator are formulated it must be set out if this is for the social or private sector and there will be a need to ensure that this work is constructed into the remit of this body.
• engaging with microbusinesses should be a key priority for future engagement. Microbusinesses form up to 85% of private landlords, and it is concerning that this group may not have been adequately represented in engagement with the Scottish Government on proposed regulations at this stage. Whilst acknowledging, from the Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA), the levels of engagement which have been carried out to date, more needs to be done to engage with the significant cohort of microbusiness owning landlords, to investigate the impact of the regulations on them and their ability to remain in the sector as a result. These businesses will also require significant support and guidance, both to understand and also to comply with regulations. The acknowledgement of this issue by officials, and their future plans to reach this group (especially via tenant awareness) is welcomed, and we look forward to hearing how this current situation will be remedied. 
• further investigation into the use of pre-existing standards for damp and mould as an avenue for inclusion in proposals should be explored. We welcome that officials agreed at our meeting to discuss this with the British Standards Institute (BSI). We also recommend that officials investigate current guidance on damp / mould prevention provided to social housing tenants by social landlords to see where pre-existing advice could be applied across the rental sector.
• effective communication with all relevant stakeholders will be vital to the success of the legislation. Tenants are often unaware of their existing rights, and many landlords will have no engagement with the representative bodies / letting agents which have engaged with officials, and will be unaware that a change to the legal framework is in development. Clarifying who is responsible for informing tenants and landlords about their rights and responsibilities will be a key area for officials to make progress on. It is also important that tenants are encouraged and supported to report damp and mould issues early, and that they know how to escalate issues that remain unaddressed within the prescribed timelines. Clear guidance will be required for scenarios in which mould and damp cannot feasibly be remediated within a property due to structural issues, as well as in instances where the cause of the mould is tenant behaviour. Officials agreed that addressing human behaviours would often need to be part of the remedy, and that landlords and tenants will often need to work together to tackle mould and damp. It was suggested that officials contact the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO) and Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), many of whom will have their own documentation on damp for tenants and how to remediate it to see if they could be used by small or single landlords who may not have the same.

RRG members welcome good progress being made, and we invite your policy officials to return to the RRG once this work has progressed further. We also welcome that officials have already agreed to do so. 

The RRG would be happy to discuss the above recommendations with you and would welcome an update on how the Scottish Government intends to take this forward during the legislative process.