Scotland's repair rules: binding timescales, both sectors.

The Regulations amend the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 and the Scottish Secure Tenants (Right to Repair) Regulations 2002 to put binding time limits on investigating damp or mould and getting the repair started. The change that matters operationally is not the standard itself but the clock: an obligation to act within a “reasonable time” is one a landlord argues about afterwards, and a period measured in working days from a named event is one a tribunal can simply count.[35]

They were laid in draft on 21 January 2026, made on 24 March 2026 as SSI 2026/173, and come into force on 6 October 2026. A concern the landlord became aware of before that date is governed by what came before and carries none of these deadlines — which is a real answer, not a gap. Maple records the pathway on the case and leaves the clock empty rather than inventing a period that did not apply.[35]

Worth settling before quoting any of it, because the answer is not the same for both sectors. The Regulations are the law; the Scottish Government's guidance is the gloss on them, and its standing differs depending on who is reading.[42]

• A private landlord must have regard to the guidance where a court or tribunal is determining whether the repairing standard has been met.[42]
• A social landlord is under no statutory requirement to have regard to it — but the Scottish Housing Regulator will reference it when monitoring landlord performance, so it is not optional in any practical sense.[42]

The guidance also says of itself that it is not exhaustive, and that landlords must still apply judgement case by case. Where this page and the guidance differ, the guidance is right and this page is out of date.[42]

Scope is all accommodation in Scotland falling under the Right to Repair Scheme or the Repairing Standard, and it covers social and private landlords alike. That is wider than the first phase of Awaab's Law in England, and it is the single most consequential difference for a landlord operating on both sides of the border.[36]

• The social rented sector — local authority housing, Registered Social Landlords, and Scottish Secure Tenancies.
• The private rented sector — Private Residential Tenancies. A Scottish private letting is in scope on day one, where an English one is not.
• Temporary accommodation, where it falls under the Right to Repair Scheme or the Repairing Standard. Where it falls under neither, these duties do not bite and applying the timescales anyway is encouraged as best practice.[44]
• Damp, mould, and the underlying defects that cause moisture to accumulate — inadequate ventilation, leaking pipes, a compromised damp-proof course.
• Not mobile homes, and not occupancy arrangements that are not formal tenancies.[36]

Two limits on when the duties bite at all. They apply only where the damp or mould is part of a building the landlord is responsible for, and the repair is the landlord's responsibility. And the timescales are **maximums**: where other legislation requires faster action it governs, the guidance's example being one working day for a significant leak in a social tenancy under the Right to Repair scheme.[36]

Day zero is the day the landlord becomes aware of potential damp or mould, and the guidance is explicit that this is not only a tenant telling them. Awareness arises equally from a routine inspection or visit, from work on a separate repair, from a third party such as a contractor or support worker, or from a report made on the tenant's behalf.[37]

The guidance also tells landlords not to assume a report is the tenant's own doing, and not to dismiss one without investigating. That is the same finding the Housing Ombudsman reached in England when it called attributing damp to lifestyle a systemic failure — and it is why measuring surface temperature against dew point is worth doing: it answers the question the assumption was standing in for.[37]

Ten working days to investigate, three to write to the tenant, five to begin the repairs. Only the first runs from awareness; the other two run from the investigation completing, and they run concurrently rather than one after another — the three-day summary is not queued behind the five-day works.[35][36]

A competent person must investigate within ten working days of awareness. There is no mandated qualification — the guidance defines a competent person as one the landlord deems to have the necessary skills and expertise to decide whether the home is substantially free from damp and mould — though experience in inspection, building surveying, environmental health or construction is advised.[38]

It should be done in person unless another method is justified. A remote investigation is possible at the tenant's request, or where enough information has already been provided, and the landlord must record why.[38]

Three working days after the day the investigation concludes, to the tenant or their representative. It may be delivered electronically, by post, in person or by equivalent means.[39]

A letting agent or a contracted member of staff may draft and issue it. Responsibility for its production stays with the landlord.[39]

The guidance sets out what it has to contain, and the list is worth working to rather than paraphrasing:[39]

• Who carried out the investigation — the people or organisations, and every investigator's findings where more than one was involved.[39]
• A brief summary of the process and findings, explicitly confirming whether the house is substantially free from damp and mould.[39]
• Any repair work carried out during the visit itself.[39]
• Where substantial damp or mould was found: what work is required, and the target timeframe for beginning it.[39]
• Where it was not: why not, and whether the landlord will carry out work anyway under its own policies.[39]

Conclusions and next steps should be unambiguous, and tenants signposted to advice services where that would help. Worked and blank examples are published at Annexes C and D of the guidance.[39]

Work must commence within five working days of the investigation concluding, and commencing is read generously: immediate mould treatment or other temporary remedial work counts. The point of the repair is that the home becomes, and continues to be, substantially free from damp and mould.[40]

The twenty working days are the only deadline in either regime measured from an event somebody has to record, so it cannot be calculated when the case is opened and does not exist until the work starts. Starting later moves the completion deadline with it.[40]

The continuing duty attaches to the issue that was investigated. Damp appearing in a different part of the home, or a significant change in the original problem, needs a fresh investigation and a fresh set of deadlines rather than being folded into the open case. And where the investigation finds no substantial damp or mould, or the repair is not the landlord's responsibility, nothing further is required under these Regulations.[40]

Where a landlord cannot meet a timescale for reasons genuinely outside their control, the Regulations set out what must happen instead. It is a procedure, not an excuse. The guidance's examples of circumstances beyond a landlord's control are severe weather, illness, contractor shortages, an inability to access the property, and unforeseen delays in obtaining an approval.[36]

• Notify the tenant of the specific duty they cannot comply with and the reasons why.[36]
• Give a revised timeframe for compliance.[36]
• Take reasonable steps to minimise the effect of the damp or mould while unable to comply — temporary repairs, monitoring, and the like.[36]

This is more tractable than England's reasonable-endeavours defence, which is a standard of conduct argued about after the fact: here there are three artefacts, and a landlord either produced them or did not. ⚠️ Maple does not record them yet, so a case legitimately extended still reads as past its deadline. Until it does, keep the written notification and the revised date on the case timeline as a recorded action.

The two sectors are enforced through different routes, which is worth knowing before a case goes wrong rather than afterwards. ⚠️ An earlier draft of this page, written from a working specification, said a social landlord faced Scottish Housing Regulator intervention and mandatory decanting at their own expense. Neither is an enforcement route in this section. The Regulator does have a role — it will reference the guidance when monitoring landlord performance — but that is monitoring, not a remedy a tenant can invoke, and mandatory decanting appears nowhere.[41][42]

• Social rented — compensation under the Right to Repair scheme: an initial £15, then £3 for every working day until the repair is complete, capped at £100 per repair. ⚠️ The scheme's usual £350 cap does not apply to the damp and mould duties.[41]
• Private rented — the tenant applies to the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland (Housing and Property Chamber), which weighs whether these timescales were met. It can make a Repairing Standard Enforcement Order, breaching which is a criminal offence, and a Rent Relief Order restricting the rent payable until the order is complied with.[41]

Both routes turn on what the landlord can show they did and when, which is why the guidance asks landlords to keep records demonstrating either compliance or the circumstances that prevented it — subject to UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. A case record that states which deadline applied, which calendar it was counted on and what was done against it is the evidence either forum asks for, and it is worth as much to a landlord who complied as to a tenant who says they did not.[36][41]

A landlord operating in both nations should not assume one process covers both. Three differences change what somebody actually has to do.

What the two do share: ten working days to investigate from awareness, three working days for the written summary measured from the investigation completing, and the rule that day zero is the day of awareness while day one is the next working day.

Every claim above is footnoted. The sources are the instrument as published on legislation.gov.uk, and the Scottish Government's guidance for landlords — its seven sections and the two annexes that bear on scope, cited individually so a reader can go to the paragraph rather than to the front door of a thirteen-page publication. Published 4 September 2026, last updated 9 September 2026, read on 14 September 2026. Numbered references resolve on our references page alongside the English ones.[35][36][37][38][39][40][41]

These Regulations were made on 24 March 2026 as SSI 2026/173 and come into force on 6 October 2026. Every timescale on this page has been read in the made regulation text and corroborated against all thirteen pages of the Scottish Government's guidance. ⚠️ One limit worth stating rather than burying: the twenty-working-day completion period is measured from the day the repair work starts, and that anchor rests on a provision the instrument inserts specifically for damp and mould — every other repair in the same scheme is measured from when the tenant notified the landlord. If you are comparing Maple's dates against a Right to Repair calculation, that is where they will differ, and Maple follows the damp-and-mould provision.[35]

⚠️ The guidance is new and has already moved once. Its only changelog entry, dated 9 September 2026, reads: a minor change has been made to Page 6 to correct an inaccurate figure. Page 6 is the one carrying the repair timescales. This page was read after that correction — but a document whose own publisher has already had to correct a figure on the page that matters most is one to re-read before 6 October, not to file as done.[40]

This page was first drafted from a working specification and then checked against the sources. The check earned its keep three times over: the specification asserted a twenty-four hour emergency duty that these Regulations do not contain, put Scottish Housing Regulator intervention and mandatory decanting in the enforcement routes where the guidance has neither, and had publicly provided Gypsy/Traveller sites inside the Regulations rather than under the separate standard that actually covers them. The emergency duty had reached the deadlines this product counts, and was removed from them — a statutory deadline that does not exist reports a breach that cannot happen, which is the one error this product is built to prevent.[36][41]