The Renters' Rights Act 2025: a letting agent's guide
What is actually in force, what is not, the deadlines that have already passed, and the five things agents are getting wrong.
The short version: Royal Assent 27 October 2025; the main provisions commenced 1 May 2026. Section 21 is gone, fixed terms are gone, rent rises run on one statutory form, bidding above the advertised rent is banned, and the new penalties are written to catch "a person acting on behalf of the landlord" — which is you, by name, in the legislation.
This is a plain-English summary for letting agents in England, not legal advice. Where the position is genuinely unsettled we say so rather than guess. For anything live — a possession claim, a penalty notice — take proper advice.
Where we actually are
The Act received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025. The main provisions came into force for private rented sector assured tenancies on 1 May 2026 under SI 2026/421. There was no phased two-tier rollout — existing and new tenancies changed on the same day, deliberately.
In force now:
- Section 21 abolished
- Assured shorthold tenancies converted to assured periodic tenancies with no end date
- Rent increases once in any 12 months, two months' notice, section 13 only
- Rent in advance capped — nothing before signing, one month after
- Rental bidding banned
- Tenants' right to request a pet
- Discrimination protections for tenants on benefits or with children
- Stronger local authority enforcement, and penalties that name agents
Not live yet: the PRS Database (regional rollout expected from late 2026, compulsory around the end of 2027), the PRS Landlord Ombudsman (expected around 2028), the Decent Homes Standard for the PRS (confirmed for 2035), and the extension of Awaab's Law to the private rented sector (implementation listed in the government's own roadmap as "TBC — subject to consultation"). Nobody has a confirmed date for the first two — treat any guide that gives you one with suspicion.
A deadline that has already passed
Worth checking your files against, because it is still a live liability:
- 31 May 2026 — the deadline for serving the official Information Sheet on tenants of converted tenancies. If any of your managed tenancies did not get it, that is a breach today, not a historic one. Serve it now and record the date.
And one that closed the door on the old regime: 31 July 2026 was the last date to issue a claim form on a section 21 notice served before 1 May 2026. Those notices are now spent.
Tenancies: no more fixed terms
You cannot draft or issue an assured tenancy agreement with an end date. Tenancies are periodic, and the rent period can be no longer than one month at a time. Tenants end the tenancy by giving two months' notice, at any point — including from day one, which is the change landlords find hardest and the one worth explaining before a tenancy starts rather than after.
Conversion was not quite universal. The transitional provisions in SI 2026/421 save tenancies where a valid notice was served before 1 May 2026 and proceedings have not concluded — those remain ASTs until they do. Tenancies that could never be assured are unaffected: lodgers, company lets, and property that is not the tenant's only or principal home. Annual rent above £100,000 sits outside the assured regime entirely.
The Written Statement of Terms
For tenancies entered into on or after 1 May 2026, the tenant must have a written statement before the tenancy is entered into — not after. It has to cover the parties and the landlord's service address, start date, rent and due date, bills, deposit, how rent increases work, how the tenancy ends and the possession procedure, fitness for habitation and repairs, gas and electrical safety, and the tenant's rights including the right to request a pet.
Missing or incomplete: up to £7,000.
Who actually owes these duties — read your agency agreement
This is the part most summaries get loose, and it matters because it decides whose name is on the penalty notice.
Section 12 of the Act inserts section 16D into the Housing Act 1988, and the duty to give the written statement is placed on the landlord. But section 16D(8) extends it to a person the landlord has contracted to ensure compliance, and section 16H confirms a landlord can discharge or breach the duty through someone acting on their behalf.
So whether it lands on you depends on what your agency agreement says. If it says you handle tenancy documentation, it lands on you. Read your own terms and know the answer before an enforcement officer asks — and if the answer is unclear, that is the drafting job to do this month.
The Information Sheet — and the trap in it
Sending a link is not compliant. Leading practitioner guidance is consistent that it must be the unaltered official version, delivered as a printed copy in person or by post, or as a PDF attached to an email or text. A link to the GOV.UK page does not count.
We have not been able to read the regulation text directly to confirm the exact wording, so treat this as strong practitioner consensus rather than settled law — and take the safe route, which costs nothing: attach the PDF.
Proof of service is where this will be won or lost. Use e-signature platforms or certificates of posting so you have an audit trail, rather than relying on "we always send it".
Possession: the grounds that matter
Section 21 is gone. Everything runs through section 8 now, on Form 3A, and the notice periods are longer than agents are used to.
| Ground | Basis | Notice | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Landlord or close family moving in | 4 months | Not usable in the first 12 months |
| 1A | Sale | 4 months | 12-month protected period, then a re-let restriction |
| 8 | Serious rent arrears | 4 weeks | 3 months' arrears (13 weeks if rent is weekly or fortnightly) at both service and hearing — up from 2 months |
| 6 | Demolition or substantial redevelopment | 4 months | Minimum tenancy period applies |
| 7A | Serious anti-social behaviour | Immediate | One of only two grounds not blocked by a deposit failure |
| 10 / 11 | Any arrears / persistent late payment | 4 weeks | Discretionary — the court applies reasonableness |
| 14 | Nuisance and anti-social behaviour | Immediate | Discretionary. The other unblocked ground |
Three things to hold on to:
Possession is barred if the deposit is unprotected — on every ground except 7A and 14. Read that carefully: it means an unprotected deposit blocks even Ground 8, the mandatory arrears ground. A landlord with a tenant three months in arrears, whose agent protected the deposit on day 34, cannot get an order until the deposit is returned or the deposit proceedings conclude. That is a professional negligence claim with a number attached to it. Once the PRS Database is live, being unregistered will bar possession too.
The three-month arrears threshold changes the cashflow conversation. A tenant who pays just enough to keep arrears under three months now sits outside Ground 8 indefinitely, and the only mandatory route is closed. Flag arrears to landlords earlier than you used to — the point at which intervention is cheap has moved.
Ground 1 and 1A cannot be used in the first 12 months, and because four months' notice is required, the practical reading is that notice can be served from month eight. How this applies to tenancies that converted on 1 May 2026 is still being clarified — do not advise confidently on that point. Knowingly misusing a ground is expensive: the maximum is £40,000.
Rent increases
One route only: a section 13 notice on Form 4A. Rent review clauses and every other mechanism are void. If you are still working from a pre-2026 template agreement, you are issuing rent increases that do not bind anyone.
- Minimum two months' notice, up from one
- Once in any 12-month period
- On converted tenancies the 12-month clock runs from the last increase, not from 1 May 2026
- An increase agreed before 1 May 2026 under a rent review clause but taking effect after it is not valid
If the tenant refers the notice to the First-tier Tribunal, the tribunal cannot set a rent above the figure the landlord proposed. There is no downside risk for the tenant in applying and no upside for the landlord — which should change how you advise. An optimistic increase now costs a referral, a delay and a determination that can only go down. The commercially sensible position is a defensible market rent with comparables gathered at the time, not an opening bid.
Deposits are unchanged: five weeks, or six where the annual rent is £50,000 or more.
Pets: 28 days, not 42
This is the most commonly misreported rule in the Act. A great deal of guidance still says 42 days. That figure came from an earlier draft and was amended before Royal Assent.
Section 11 gives the landlord 28 days from the date of the request to respond in writing. Where the landlord asks the tenant for further information, or needs a superior landlord's consent, the deadline becomes 7 days from receiving that information or that decision — which is not the same as "day 35". If the tenant takes three weeks to answer a question, the clock lands well beyond day 35; if they answer on day two, it does not extend the 28 days at all. Diary it from the date the information arrives.
Miss it and consent is deemed given.
Reasonable grounds to refuse include a prohibition in a superior lease, a property genuinely unsuitable for that animal, another tenant's allergies, licensing conditions or animal welfare concerns. Simply not liking pets is not reasonable, and neither is a bad experience with a different tenant years ago.
Two further points agents get wrong: you cannot require pet insurance as a condition of consent — you may suggest it — and you cannot take a bigger deposit for a pet. The Tenant Fees Act cap applies regardless. Pet damage comes out of the standard deposit, if it is fair and evidenced.
Discrimination
The provisions bind "relevant persons" — prospective landlords and anyone acting or purporting to act directly or indirectly on their behalf. That is you, expressly.
You may no longer refuse or restrict enquiries, information, viewings or the grant of a tenancy because a prospective tenant receives benefits or would have children living with or visiting them. That includes any practice with the same effect, not just an explicit "No DSS".
"The landlord told us to" is not a defence. It is the agent who takes the instruction, writes the listing, screens the enquiry and declines the viewing. If a landlord gives you that instruction, the compliant response is to explain that it is unlawful and that you cannot act on it — in writing. A "No DSS" phrase left in an old portal template is the easiest evidence a Trading Standards officer will collect all year.
Affordability referencing is still permitted, as is applying genuine occupancy and overcrowding rules. Narrow exceptions exist where conduct is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, or is required by certain pre-existing insurance contracts — they are narrow, and never rely on an insurer's preference you have not seen in writing.
The Ombudsman: it isn't yours
Letting agents are not members of the new PRS Landlord Ombudsman. It covers private landlords only. The reasoning was blunt: a landlord should not be able to escape responsibility because the agent happens to be in a redress scheme.
So your existing mandatory membership of The Property Ombudsman or Property Redress continues exactly as before, under the 2014 Order. A landlord who uses you must still join the new scheme in their own right — your membership does not cover them. The scheme is not live and is expected around 2028, after the database.
Expect overlap when it arrives. A tenant will be able to complain to your scheme about your conduct and separately to the landlord ombudsman about the landlord's legal breaches. Worth building the triage into your complaints procedure before 2028, not during it.
The penalties — and the one that cannot reach you
Section 15 inserts sections 16I and 16K into the Housing Act 1988: civil penalties of up to £7,000 for breaches and up to £40,000 for offences, as an alternative to prosecution. Section 16M defines a "relevant person" to include a person acting on behalf of the landlord — so agents are directly exposed. For the first time, a large slice of tenancy law penalties name you rather than reaching you through your client.
Both figures are ceilings. Government's civil penalties guidance sets recommended starting points below them — around £6,000 for the discrimination breaches, £4,000 for accepting bids above the advertised rent, and £3,000 for failing to state the proposed rent in an advertisement — and councils work up or down from there.
Rent Repayment Orders cannot be made against you
RROs doubled to up to two years' rent for offences committed on or after 1 May 2026, and now extend to superior landlords and to company directors where an offence involved their consent, connivance or neglect. But GOV.UK is explicit: an RRO cannot be made against a letting or managing agent.
Read that as a warning rather than a comfort. The landlord repays up to two years of rent even where the agent's negligence caused the breach — and then looks at whoever was supposed to be checking. That is a professional indemnity conversation.
Five things agents are actually getting wrong
1. Advertising the rent loosely. Every advert needs a single precise figure for a defined period — no "offers over", no "POA" — and the same figure on every portal, window card, social post and email. There are in fact two separate breaches here, and most agents only know about one: accepting or inviting a bid above the advertised rent, and failing to state the proposed rent in the advertisement at all. That second one bites on every single listing you publish. A tenant volunteering more still puts you in breach. You can reduce an asking rent; you cannot raise it for the same letting without withdrawing and re-advertising first.
2. Taking money in the wrong order. Holding deposit cleared, then — only once the agreement is signed — offset the holding deposit and request the balance. No rent at all before signing, and a maximum of one month between signing and commencement. Getting it wrong is up to £5,000, or £30,000 on a repeat within five years, and it bites on anyone acting on the landlord's behalf.
3. Proof of service. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the easiest penalty to avoid and the hardest to defend after the fact.
4. Losing compliance data in the conversion. This is the quiet one. Rent review dates and compliance reminders get lost moving from fixed-term to periodic records, and some systems drop a tenancy automatically once notice is served. Combine that with the 12-month clock running from the last increase, and you get invalid section 13 notices from a data problem rather than a legal one.
5. The pet deadline. 28 days. Not 42.
What this means for how you run the office
Almost everything above comes down to three operational habits: knowing when each date falls due, being able to prove you served something, and not losing either when a tenancy changes shape.
ProPixa tracks certificate and compliance dates per property and warns you before they expire, keeps tenancy and document records in one place with the tenant on the same page in their own free app, and records rent against each tenancy so the last-increase date does not get lost. It is not a substitute for legal advice, and it will not stop you serving the wrong notice — but the fourth mistake on that list is a records problem, and records are something software can genuinely fix.
The whole handbook, free
This guide is one chapter. The UK Letting Agent Handbook 2026 covers client money, redress, AML, the Tenant Fees Act, deposits, possession, the certificates you chase and what agents actually charge — 19 chapters, no email required.
Download the handbook (PDF)Related guides
Sources
- Renters' Rights Act 2025 (c.26), and the Commencement No. 2 Regulations 2026, SI 2026/421 — legislation.gov.uk
- Guide to the Renters' Rights Act — gov.uk
- Renters' Rights Act: an overview for landlords — gov.uk
- Civil penalties under the Renters' Rights Act 2025 and other housing legislation — gov.uk
- Rent repayment orders: guidance for tenants — gov.uk
- The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026, and SI 2026/324 — gov.uk
- Assured tenancy forms (Form 3A, Form 4A) — gov.uk
- Renters' Rights Act: practical steps for letting agents — Propertymark
- House of Commons Library research briefing CBP-10669
Something here wrong or out of date? Email help@propixa.co.uk and we will correct it. We would rather be accurate than flattering.