The Decent Homes Standard 2026 Update and Damp

The Decent Homes Standard has been around since 2006. For most of its life it was an oblique instrument — a requirement that homes meet a basic threshold, with damp and mould tucked inside a generic "reasonable state of repair" criterion. The 2026 revision breaks damp and mould out as an explicit, named failure criterion, and applies the standard to the private rented sector for the first time.

For housing-association stock teams and the surveyors who serve them, this is the most significant procedural change in fifteen years.

What the Decent Homes Standard is, briefly

The Decent Homes Standard sets a minimum quality threshold for social housing in England. A home is "non-decent" if it fails any of four criteria. Pre-2026 those were:

1. It must meet the statutory minimum standard for housing (HHSRS)
2. It must be in a reasonable state of repair
3. It must have reasonably modern facilities and services
4. It must provide a reasonable degree of thermal comfort

Damp and mould previously lived inside criteria 1 (via HHSRS) and 2 (via "reasonable repair"). The interpretation was elastic; some landlords treated visible mould as a category-2 repair issue, others as a category-1 hazard. The variability is what the 2026 revision is designed to end.

What changed in the 2026 revision

The revision adds damp and mould as a named, standalone failure criterion. A home where damp or mould is present beyond defined thresholds is non-decent regardless of how the landlord scores it under HHSRS. The thresholds are:

• Visible mould affecting a contiguous area greater than 0.25 square metres, OR
• Visible mould in two or more rooms, OR
• Sustained moisture readings above defined thresholds in walls, floors, or ceilings for more than 28 days, OR
• Any mould present in a room used for sleeping by a child under five or anyone with a relevant respiratory condition.

Crucially, these are objective criteria. There is no element of surveyor judgement. If the conditions are present, the home fails Decent Homes — period.

The PRS extension

Until 2026, the Decent Homes Standard applied only to social housing. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 extended it to the private rented sector with phased commencement. From October 2026, every private rented home in England must meet the Decent Homes Standard, including the new damp-and-mould criterion.

This brings approximately 4.5 million additional homes into scope. Local authority enforcement teams have been resourced to inspect and serve improvement notices. The implication for damp surveyors is significant: PRS landlords now need periodic stock surveys of the kind housing associations have been commissioning for decades.

What stock condition surveys must now capture

Pre-2026 stock condition surveys typically captured damp and mould as a free-text observation. Post-2026, the data is structured. A compliant stock survey records:

• Mould area in square metres per affected room
• Number of rooms with any visible mould
• Moisture readings in walls and at known condensation points, with date stamps
• Occupancy data: whether each bedroom is used by a child under five or someone with a respiratory condition
• Photographic evidence for each finding, time-stamped and geo-tagged
• Decent Homes pass/fail against the new criterion specifically, separate from HHSRS scoring

The data has to feed into the housing association's annual return to the Regulator of Social Housing. Stock teams that ran surveys on paper-and-Excel pre-2026 are now requiring digital capture — partly for speed, partly because the regulator's return now expects structured data fields rather than narrative observations.

Implications for damp surveyors

Three things flow from this:

1. Bigger volumes. Housing associations are retrofitting damp-and-mould-specific survey rounds across their stock. A typical mid-sized association might commission 5,000 inspections in 2026 it didn't commission in 2025.
2. Structured outputs. Free-text findings are no longer enough. Reports need to feed structured data into the association's asset management system. Surveyors who can provide CSV / API output have a meaningful competitive advantage.
3. Higher consequences. A surveyor who under-reports mould area or misses a vulnerable-occupant flag now causes a regulatory failure for the landlord, not just a complaint risk. The bar for accuracy has risen.

The intersection with Awaab's Law

The Decent Homes Standard and Awaab's Law operate in parallel, not substitution. Awaab's Law sets the response framework when a hazard is reported by a tenant. The Decent Homes Standard sets the proactive quality threshold for the housing stock.

In practice this means a housing association now has two damp and mould workflows: a reactive one (Awaab's Law timelines triggered by tenant reports) and a proactive one (Decent Homes-driven stock surveys to identify problems before tenants do). The same surveyor can serve both, but the data capture requirements differ slightly.

For background on the reactive side, see our piece on Awaab's Law for damp surveyors. For the PRS angle, see the Renters' Rights Act 2025.

What to do this quarter

If you're a surveyor or a stock team reading this in 2026, the practical to-do list is short and specific:

• Update your survey forms to capture mould area in square metres, per room. Free-text won't cut it.
• Add structured occupancy questions covering vulnerable-occupant status by bedroom.
• Add a Decent Homes pass/fail field separate from HHSRS scoring.
• Confirm your photographic capture is time-stamped and geo-tagged. Loose photos won't survive a regulator inspection.
• Confirm you can export structured data, not just PDF reports, for stock-team clients.

SurveyMate captures all of the above by default — that's the product's reason to exist. But the underlying message is independent of any particular tool: damp and mould have moved from a soft observation to a structured regulatory data field, and survey practice needs to catch up.