The confirmation of a 1 May 2026 start date for the Renters Rights Act marks a decisive shift in how the private rented sector will be regulated.
However many landlords should regard December 27th 2025 as the real start of the Renters Rights Act as local housing authorities receive draconian new powers to investigate landlords. The best approach is to see December 27th as the true deadline rather than delaying until May.
Landlords take several steps, including:
- Make sure every tenancy file is complete and compliant
- Double-check deposit protection, prescribed information, and evidence of service
- Pull together all certificates, safety checks, and licensing documents in one watertight folder
- Check that your letting agent (if you use one) has done what they say — and make sure you have proof
- Identify any gaps now, while there’s still time to fix them quietly.
What many landlords have not yet grasped is that the legislative overhaul does not stop with tenancy reform. We are about to see a far more assertive enforcement landscape, driven by councils armed with stronger powers, bigger penalties and clearer duties.
Included is a Decent Homes Standard and the long-awaited and allegedly ‘upgraded’ Housing Health and Safety Rating System. The government says it will offer a more transparent and efficient way of assessing hazards. What is vertical is it will make it much harder for poor property conditions to slip through the cracks. Every landlord should be prepared for far closer scrutiny of the standard of their homes an draconian enforcement as councils monetise the new legislation.
From 1st May this year, councils will cease to have discretion as to enforcing housing standards laws. Every council in England will be legally required to police these new rights.
The first thing government did after Royal Assent was to issue guidance to councils on their new powers! And boy, they now have a strengthened toolkit to do it.
Fines will start at £7,000 for many breaches, but the ceiling rises to £40,000 where offences are repeated, ongoing or serious. On top of that, tenants and councils will have strengthened access to rent repayment orders (RRO), for a wider range of offences and extended from 12 months’ rent to 24 months. So expect to see RRO’s starting at £24,000 and upwards.
What should concern landlords even more is the massive expansion of investigatory powers. Councils will be able to demand information from landlords, agents, banks and contractors. They will be permitted to enter business premises and, in specific situations, homes to check compliance.
They will also have the authority to seize documents and computers if they ‘suspect’ wrongdoing. This represents a level of investigatory reach that many landlords have never experienced before. Powers in many cases greater than the police and frankly with little or no accountability. Landlords should indeed be afraid.
Penalties will also take on a new level of severity. Councils will be able to issue larger fines (which they get to keep for their revenue budgets), escalate sanctions for repeat offenders and use strengthened rent repayment orders to recover rent on behalf of themselves or DWP. Some councils even employ specialists to help tenants issue RROs against landlords to make sure landlords are penalised to the max. It is clear that habitual non-compliance will no longer be met with a slap on the wrist.
To prepare for these responsibilities, local housing authorities will receive a share of more than £18 million this year. With enhanced funding and clearer rules, we can expect enforcement activity to increase sharply.
Our advice to landlords is simple: take this seriously and get ahead of it now.
The margin for error is minimal, and councils will soon have more resources and the statutory duty to act quickly and decisively against landlords.
The government has published what it calls a Guide To The Renters Rights Act on its official website.
Overview of the Renters Rights Act:
- Abolish section 21 evictions and move to a simpler tenancy structure where all assured tenancies are periodic – providing more security for tenants and empowering them to challenge poor practice and unfair rent increases without fear of eviction. We will implement this new system in one stage, giving all tenants security immediately.
- Ensure possession grounds are fair to both parties, giving tenants more security, while ensuring landlords can recover their property when reasonable. The Act introduces new safeguards for tenants, giving them more time to find a home if landlords evict to move in or sell, and ensuring unscrupulous landlords cannot misuse grounds.
- Provide stronger protections against backdoor eviction by ensuring tenants are able to appeal excessive above-market rents which are purely designed to force them out. As now, landlords will still be able to increase rents to market price for their properties and an independent tribunal will make a judgement on this, if needed.
- Introduce a new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman that will provide quick, fair, impartial and binding resolution for tenants’ complaints about their landlord. This will bring tenant-landlord complaint resolution in line with established redress practices for tenants in social housing and consumers of property agent services
- Create a Private Rented Sector Database to help landlords understand their legal obligations and demonstrate compliance (giving good landlords confidence in their position), alongside providing better information to tenants to make informed decisions when entering into a tenancy agreement. It will also support local councils – helping them target enforcement activity where it is needed most. Landlords will need to be registered on the database in order to use certain possession grounds.
- Give tenants strengthened rights to request a pet in the property, which the landlord must consider and cannot unreasonably refuse.
- Apply the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector to give renters safer, better value homes and remove the blight of poor-quality homes in local communities.
- Apply ‘Awaab’s Law’ to the sector, setting clear legal expectations about the timeframes within which landlords in the private rented sector must take action to make homes safe where they contain serious hazards.
- Make it illegal for landlords and agents to discriminate against prospective tenants in receipt of benefits or with children – helping to ensure everyone is treated fairly when looking for a place to live.
- End the practice of rental bidding by prohibiting landlords and agents from asking for or accepting offers above the advertised rent. Landlords and agents will be required to publish an asking rent for their property and it will be illegal to accept offers made above this rate.
- Strengthen local authority enforcement by expanding civil penalties, introducing a package of investigatory powers and bringing in a new requirement for local authorities to report on enforcement activity.
- Strengthen rent repayment orders by extending them to superior landlords, doubling the maximum penalty and ensuring repeat offenders have to repay the maximum amount.
Landlords have said the reforms would increase the screening of prospective tenants and have spoken of nervousness around what happens when tenancies go wrong.
We're now on a countdown of just months to that law coming in - so good landlords can get ready and bad landlords should clean up their act!
Government issues awareness campaign
The government has launched an awareness campaign to increase landlords’ knowledge of the Renters Rights Act.
The guidance takes the form of a suite of notes explaining how different parts of the Act will work. Additional guidance on some elements will be issued next year.
In a statement to Landlord Today, representatives of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) say that “as a landlord, it is your responsibility to read the guidance in full. You must make the necessary changes to your letting practices to ensure you’re compliant with the new law when it’s implemented on 1st May 2026.”
And the department gives this list of what it believes landlords must do:
Provide information to your tenants:
- you’ll need to give a government-produced information sheet to your tenants which will explain what the new rules mean for the tenancy.
- we’ll publish the information sheet on our website in March 2026. You’ll need to send this to your tenants on or before 31st May 2026.
- if your current tenancy is based entirely on a verbal agreement, you’ll need to give your tenant a written record of specific terms of the agreement. You will have to do this instead of providing the information sheet.
- we’ll publish further guidance in January 2026 on the information you’ll need to provide. You will have to give this to your tenants in writing on or before 31st May 2026.
Prepare your new tenancies created on or after 1st May 2026:
- if you create a new tenancy on or after 1st May 2026, you’ll need to provide the tenants with certain information about the tenancy in writing. You can do this by including it in a written tenancy agreement.
- we’ll publish further guidance in January 2026 on the information you’ll need to provide, to give you time to update your tenancy agreement templates.
Prepare to use Ground 4A, if you’re a student landlord:
- if you’re a student landlord and want to use Ground 4A to evict your tenants in the future, you’ll need to write to them to let them know.
- we’ll publish further guidance on how to do this in March 2026.
Read the guidance and think about how you can prepare for your next new tenancy:
- for example, on or after 1st May 2026, you’ll need to publish an asking rent for your property in any written adverts you put out.
- you won’t be able to ask prospective tenants to bid above this amount (or accept any such bids), and you won’t be able to ask them to pay more than a month’s rent in advance.
Familiarise yourself with the new forms
- we’ll publish new forms that you’ll need to use under the new system, including to increase the rent on your property.
- you should familiarise yourself with these forms when we publish them in early 2026.