Awaab’s Law Phase 2: What social housing contractors need from landlords

By David Guy · 9 September 2026

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Our previous article looked at Awaab’s Law Phase 2 from a landlord readiness perspective. But the same pressure will land heavily on contractors, DLOs and specialist supply chains.

Every procurement asks contractors to prove they can mobilise, recruit, meet KPIs, manage risk, improve customer experience and deliver value. Those are fair questions.

Phase 2 adds another question that clients should ask themselves:

What kind of client will we be when the legal clock starts?

That question may determine if Phase 2 is delivered as a controlled operating model or becomes another source of conflict, delay and blame.

A failing contractor may not be the reason for a struggling contract. Sometimes the specification is unclear, the data is unreliable, and landlords often underestimate demand. Or even, teams rush mobilisation, teams have unclear responsibilities, and customer promises are made without understanding the operational impact.

Sometimes the contractor is expected to fix problems that existed long before the contract was awarded.

Therefore, this can then result in a transfer of frustration rather than being a partnership.

Commercial reality is not the enemy of good service

There can be an awkwardness in housing about commercial reality. Contractors are expected to be stable, responsive and resilient, but can be viewed with suspicion when they talk about cost, margin, labour availability or risk.

Yet a contract that does not work commercially will not work operationally for long.

The signs are predictable: vacancies, turnover, weak supervision, disputes over variations, delayed investment and a steady loss of confidence on both sides.

Commercial discipline allows a contractor to recruit, train, supervise, invest and stay stable enough to deliver.

Contractors often see the risk first

Contractors work across homes, estates, systems and several client teams. They see patterns early.

• Access arrangements that keep failing.
• Repair descriptions that do not match what is in the home.
• Customer promises that cannot be met with the resources available.
• Follow-on work that disappears between teams.
• Services heading towards difficulty before the monthly report shows it.

Those insights can provide an important early warning of operational issues and should be considered as part of ongoing service improvement. Contractors often have a unique view across multiple services and workstreams, allowing them to identify trends and recurring challenges before they appear in performance reports or formal assurance processes.

Of course, not every challenge raised by a contractor reflects a genuine underlying issue. Sometimes concerns may be influenced by commercial pressures or performance shortfalls. Equally, however, it is unhelpful to assume that every warning is an attempt to avoid accountability. Strong client organisations are able to distinguish between excuses and legitimate concerns, using evidence, data and professional judgement to understand the root cause of problems and take appropriate action.

Partnership is not the absence of challenge

Strong partnerships are not defined by the absence of challenge. In fact, the most effective relationships are often those where both sides can be candid about performance, risks and concerns without every conversation escalating into a contractual battle. That level of trust allows issues to be addressed sooner and resolved more effectively.

Strong partnerships are clear about standards, cost, risk, data, communication and responsibility. Issues are addressed early rather than being allowed to grow. Neither party waits for a dispute to discover they have been working to different assumptions.

And they understand that the customer does not care which organisation caused the failure. The customer sees one service.

Most problems are built in early

Many difficult contracts carry the seeds of failure before the first repair is raised.

• The specification describes outputs, but not how the service should work.
• Mobilisation focuses on systems and staffing, but not the customer journey.
• Teams transfer data without properly testing it.
• Policies change, but planners, operatives and supervisors are not trained.
• Contracts allocate risks, but operational teams do not fully understand them.

Six months later, the relationship is tense, both sides are building a case, and customers are already feeling the consequences.

The better question

The old question is: how do we manage the contractor?

The better question is: how do we create a service where both client and contractor are clear about what success requires?

That means testing if the specification reflects reality, involving delivery expertise before decisions are fixed, being honest about cost and capacity, and agreeing how new requirements, including Awaab’s Law Phase 2, will change ways of working.

It also means recognising that a contractor can be commercially driven and committed to customers. The two are not mutually exclusive.

How we can help

We work with landlords, contractors and DLOs at the points where relationships are most likely to succeed or fail: procurement, mobilisation, Awaab’s Law readiness, service change, contract reset and demobilisation.

Support can range from a short independent health check or facilitated reset conversation to a fuller review of specification, operating model, commercial assumptions, governance, customer journey, supply-chain capacity and performance oversight.

Because contractors do not need easy clients.

They need capable ones.