Compliance

Every standard your survey answers to, in one platform

A damp survey in the UK has to satisfy more than the client: RICS professional standards, PCA codes of practice, BS 5250 moisture guidance, HHSRS hazard scoring, the Decent Homes Standard, and — for landlords — the statutory clocks of Awaab's Law. SurveyMate is built so the survey you carry out on site is compliant by the time it leaves as a report.

The compliance stack, in one product

Most damp survey software is glorified form-filling. SurveyMate treats compliance as a first-class concern — because that's what landlords, housing associations, and councils are actually buying in 2026.

Statutory deadline tracking

Awaab's Law sets hard timelines from the moment a hazard is reported. SurveyMate timestamps every step — report received, inspection completed, remedial works ordered — and warns you before any clock runs out.

Full audit trail per case

Every photo, voice note, finding, edit, and email is logged with user, timestamp, and version history. If a case goes to the Housing Ombudsman or First-tier Tribunal, the evidence is already organised.

Awaab's Law notice generation

Built-in templates for the statutory notices landlords must serve to tenants — pre-filled from your survey findings and ready to send.

HHSRS hazard scoring

Findings are mapped to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System categories of damp and mould (Cat 1 / Cat 2) so reports stand up to scrutiny under the Decent Homes Standard.

Built for housing associations

Bulk job allocation, surveyor performance dashboards, board-level compliance reporting, and SSO. Used by stock teams managing 5,000+ properties.

Defensible by design

Reports are versioned and locked once issued. Edits create a new version with a clear changelog — so a report tendered as evidence is exactly the report that was sent to the tenant.

The standards your reports must stand up to

A defensible damp report isn't one document — it's a chain of evidence that satisfies several frameworks at once. Here is how SurveyMate maps to each of them.

RICS Home Survey Standard

The RICS Home Survey Standard requires surveyors to evidence their findings, record limitations of inspection, and report in terms a layperson can act on. SurveyMate's structured findings, photo-per-defect capture, and explicit limitation fields mean a report exported from the platform already follows the shape the standard expects — and the version history shows exactly what the surveyor recorded on the day.

PCA guidance and codes of practice

Property Care Association members work to PCA codes of practice for the investigation of damp, timber defects, and condensation. SurveyMate's survey templates are built around that methodology: moisture profiles, salts analysis, sub-floor ventilation checks, and timber condition records each have a structured home, so a PCA-style investigation translates directly into the report rather than being squeezed into free text.

BS 5250:2021 — moisture in buildings

BS 5250 frames condensation risk around the balance of moisture production, ventilation, and heating. SurveyMate captures the inputs that analysis needs — relative humidity and temperature readings, ventilation provision, occupancy factors, and weather context on the survey date — so condensation diagnoses are backed by recorded data, not assertion.

HHSRS hazard assessment

Findings can be mapped to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System damp and mould hazard categories (Category 1 and Category 2). That matters twice over: it is how the Decent Homes Standard judges failure, and it is the trigger for statutory action under Awaab's Law.

UK GDPR and data protection

Survey data includes tenants' names, addresses, health-relevant disclosures, and photographs of their homes. SurveyMate runs on UK-region infrastructure, is registered with the ICO, supports role-based access, and provides a signed Data Processing Agreement for housing associations and local authorities on request.

Statutory deadlines: Awaab's Law and beyond

For landlords, the sharpest edge of compliance is statutory time limits. Awaab's Law sets fixed timeframes for social landlords to investigate and remedy damp and mould hazards, the Renters' Rights Act 2025 extends those clocks to the private rented sector, and the revised Decent Homes Standard makes damp and mould explicit failure criteria.

SurveyMate includes a dedicated Awaab's Law module — Category 1 hazard flagging, automatic deadline escalation, statutory notice drafting, and a full per-case audit trail. We cover it in detail, including a FAQ for housing associations and councils, on the dedicated page below.

Talk to us about your compliance workload

Housing associations, ALMOs, councils, and large managing agents — we'll show you what an audit-ready damp and mould programme looks like running on SurveyMate.

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