Ask a repairs team who is responsible for the uneven path between two blocks and you will often get three different answers, each given with reasonable confidence. Nobody has been careless. The question has rarely needed a settled answer, because until now very little turned on it. From 30 November 2026, quite a lot does.

Phase 2 of Awaab’s Law comes into force on that date, extending prescribed timescales well beyond damp and mould to excess cold and heat, falls, structural collapse, fire and electrical hazards, hygiene and food safety, and pests. A hazard only triggers the law where three things are true at once: the hazard exists, a deficiency in the dwelling is linked to it, and there is an impact on the person living there. Communal areas sit awkwardly inside that test. The government’s Phase 2 guidance is clear that where a defect is in a communal area outside your responsibility, you should resolve it with whoever is responsible, under your wider policies rather than the Awaab’s Law clock. That route only works if you already know who that is.

Speaking at the Social Housing Round Table this month, Louise Murphy, Head of Social Housing and Regeneration at MSB Solicitors, put communal audits near the top of her Phase 2 preparation list: establish what you own and what you don’t, and do it before November. Car parks came up as the most contentious example, with ownership frequently unclear, disabled bay provision rarely checked, and residents rarely consulted about either. Paths and steps within the demise are a different matter. Those sit squarely with the landlord under Sections 9 and 10.

None of this is difficult work. It is simply work that nobody has had a pressing reason to do, and there are about four months left to do it. The organisations who finish it will spend December triaging hazards, rather than searching for title plans while a 15 day clock runs down.

That groundwork is worth doing regardless of what tool ends up doing it. An audit doesn’t need to be complicated: a walk around the site with a checklist, a note of what’s covered by the lease, a call to the freeholder or managing agent where it isn’t obvious, and a record kept somewhere a repairs team can actually find it. What matters is finishing it before November, not how.

The value of an audit isn’t the document at the end of it. It’s that when someone rings in December about a broken step outside their front door, the person taking the call knows straight away whether it’s yours, and what happens next. Alix’s structured intake can hold that record alongside every other piece of evidence on a property, so the answer is there when the call comes in, not buried in a shared drive.