How the statutory clock works

Every statutory job gets its deadlines computed once, server-side, the moment it’s created — never on a device, and never from a date a client supplies.

What it is

When a work order is created, the platform stamps a statutory block onto it if the hazard and severity put it in scope: an investigate-by deadline, a written-summary deadline, and a safety-works deadline, each computed in working days (weekends and English bank holidays excluded, for a case in England) from the date the case was reported — never from when someone happens to open the record. An emergency-severity case instead gets a flat 24-hour clock for all three.

Which rules a case follows depends on its nation: the one set on its property, or your organisation’s default nation (Settings → App configuration → Hazards) when the property has none. With neither set, the case follows England. The nation is copied onto the case when it’s created, so changing it later affects new cases only.

• England — Awaab’s Law, as described above.
• Wales — WHQS element 1c, for cases reported on or after 1 April 2026, every hazard type except overcrowding: investigate within 10 working days and remedy within a further 5 (24 hours and a further 24 where imminent harm is assessed), with a summary plan due 5 working days after the investigation unless the remedy is recorded in time. The Welsh addendum doesn’t define working days or say when the summary plan’s 5 days start, so these are our judgement calls: weekends and England-and-Wales bank holidays are skipped, and the summary plan is counted from the investigation.
• Scotland — social landlords’ damp and mould timescales, for cases reported on or after 6 October 2026: investigate within 10 working days, then the written summary within 3 and the start of repairs within 5 working days after the investigation, and completion within 20 working days of the recorded start. Weekends, Scottish bank holidays and Christmas Eve are skipped; local holidays and suspended periods aren’t modelled. There’s no 24-hour track, other hazards get no clock, and private landlords’ deadlines aren’t calculated.
• Northern Ireland — no statutory clock; set your own due date.

These first three dates are a projection made at the moment the case is raised. Once the investigation actually concludes — recorded via the investigatedAt stamp — the written-summary and safety-works deadlines are recomputed against that real conclusion date, additively, as a sibling effective block. The original projection is never overwritten; every reader of the clock prefers the effective dates once they exist, and falls back to the projection until they do.

How to do it

1. A case’s statutory clock starts automatically the moment a survey is raised under a hazard and severity that puts it in scope — there’s nothing to switch on. A works order raised to remediate it tracks that source survey’s own clock rather than carrying a fresh one of its own.
2. As work progresses, record each stage as it genuinely happens: investigatedAt when the investigation concludes, summaryProvidedAt once the written summary is sent, and worksBegunAt once safety works begin. Each stage can only be stamped once — statutory stamps are write-once, exactly like the underlying regulation intends: a contemporaneous record of when you actually acted, not a date you can revise afterwards. In Wales the remedy stage is met by repairsCompletedAt (the hazard remedied), not by worksBegunAt; in Scotland worksBegunAt marks the start of repairs and repairsCompletedAt their completion.
3. An on-site presence check-in can auto-stamp worksBegunAt the moment an operative checks in at the property, if the investigation is already concluded — no manual stamp is needed in that case.
4. Watch the job’s own statutory strip or drawer for the live countdown against whichever deadline is currently outstanding.

How it integrates

The statutory clock feeds the Dashboard’s compliance board, the job drawer’s own countdown, the deadline-alert sweeps (see Deadline alerts and escalation), the evidence bundle’s timeline, and any webhook configured for work_order.stage_recorded and work_order.deadline_breached/work_order.deadline_approaching. General (routine, non-hazard) jobs and works-kind orders never carry a statutory block at all — a works order tracks its source survey’s clock, not a fresh one of its own. See Phase 1 today for the exact investigate/summary/works timescales this arithmetic implements, and Jobs with no statutory clock, and internal targets for which hazards carry none at all.

Common problems

• A stage stamp is wrong and I need to fix it. It can’t be edited or re-stamped once set — statutory stamps are write-once by design, so the record always shows exactly when the stage was genuinely marked done.
• The written-summary and safety-works dates changed after I logged the investigation outcome. Expected — they re-anchor to the investigation’s actual conclusion the moment you record it, replacing the original projection with the real, effective deadline.
• A job I’d expect to carry a clock doesn’t show one. Check whether its hazard type and severity actually put it in scope — see Jobs with no statutory clock, and internal targets — and which nation it follows: a Scottish case only gets a clock for damp and mould, and a Northern Irish case never does.
• I changed a property’s nation but its open case kept the old deadlines. Expected — the nation is copied onto a case when it’s created, so a running clock never moves. New cases at that property use the new nation.