The Renters' Rights Act 2025 — what's changed for landlords

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and its main provisions came into force on 1 May 2026. From that date the private rented sector in England has operated under a substantially different framework — the biggest reset of landlord and tenant law since the Housing Act 1988. The headline shift is the abolition of no-fault eviction. All possession now runs through an expanded list of Section 8 grounds, each requiring evidence and the right notice period. Underneath that change sits a more fundamental one: every assured tenancy is now an assured periodic tenancy (APT) from day one. There are no more fixed terms, no more renewal cycles, no twelve-month minimum to anchor a tenancy to. Rent can only be increased once a year, through a Section 13 notice; tenants can challenge the increase at the First-tier Tribunal, and under the new rules the tribunal can no longer set the rent above the level the landlord proposed. A handful of newer obligations sit alongside the structural changes. Tenants have a statutory right to request a pet in writing, with the landlord obliged to respond within twenty-eight days and unable to refuse unreasonably. Rental bidding wars are banned — properties must be advertised at a stated rent and cannot be let above it. The Decent Homes Standard is being extended to the PRS, and Awaab's Law (the duty to remediate hazards within set timescales after notification) is being applied to private rentals as well as social ones. A new mandatory landlord database (the Property Portal) and a single PRS Ombudsman are being rolled out in stages from late 2026 through 2028. What follows is the practical breakdown of each of those changes — what it means in day-to-day terms, and what a sensible landlord should be doing now.

Since 1 May 2026 every notice to end a tenancy in England has to specify a statutory ground under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988. There is no no-fault route any more. The grounds available have been substantially expanded under the Renters' Rights Act, and between them they cover most of the legitimate reasons a landlord needs to recover a property — but each one comes with its own notice period and its own evidential bar. The grounds most landlords will encounter in practice are these. Ground 1 covers the situation where the landlord, or a close family member, intends to move into the property as their main home. It requires four months' notice, can't be used in the first twelve months of the tenancy, and the property has to actually become someone's main home — not a holiday house or a future plan. Ground 1A is the new ground that covers selling. Same four-month notice, same twelve-month tenancy minimum. The landlord must genuinely intend to sell; pretending to sell to recover possession and then re-letting will catch you out. Ground 1B covers redevelopment or substantial works that genuinely require vacant possession. Ground 8 is the main rent-arrears ground. Three months' arrears (or thirteen weeks' if rent is paid weekly), required both at the date the notice is served and at the hearing. Four weeks' notice. This is a step up from the old two-month, two-week regime. There's an important enforcement layer attached to Grounds 1 and 1A. After the notice expires, you cannot re-let or market the property to anyone other than family for twelve months from the earliest possession date the notice gave. Break this rule and you've committed a criminal offence — councils have been given new enforcement powers, and the civil penalty can reach £40,000. The practical implication is straightforward: document everything. The grounds are now your only route to possession, and the courts will examine the evidence behind whichever one you've relied on. Keep contemporaneous notes of arrears conversations, save estate agent valuations if you're claiming to sell, and retain proof of any planning application if you're redeveloping.

Fixed-term tenancies in the regulated sector no longer exist. Every tenancy — new or pre-existing — is an assured periodic tenancy (APT) that rolls month-to-month from day one. There is nothing to renew, no break clause to negotiate, no twelve-month minimum to lock the tenant into. Tenants can give two months' notice to leave at any time after the first day. From a landlord's point of view that increases turnover risk on paper: a tenant on a 12-month fixed term used to provide a fixed planning horizon; now they can hand notice in at month two. Two things mitigate this in practice. First, most tenants move because their life requires it (a job, a baby, a relationship change) — not because they can. The 12-month fixed term in our experience rarely prevented an early exit; tenants either negotiated a release or sat on the rent until they could leave. Second, your own planning horizon adjusts: where you used to plan voids around fixed-term end dates, you now plan them around the realistic average tenant stay (still around two years on the Sussex coast). Practical implications: don't bother offering a 12-month minimum term — it isn't enforceable. Price the rent at year-one market rate rather than discounting for length. Make the move-in experience strong enough that the tenant doesn't want to leave.

Tenants now have a statutory right to request, in writing, to keep a pet in the property. The landlord has 28 days to respond in writing. A refusal must be reasonable. What counts as reasonable: a superior landlord or freeholder forbidding pets in the lease (this is the most common one in flats); a documented severe allergy in the property; the property being demonstrably unsuitable (a flat with no outdoor access for a large dog, for example); the pet being legally prohibited or recognised as dangerous. What doesn't count as reasonable: general concern about damage; previous bad experience with pets; personal preference; a blanket "no pets" clause in the contract. The contract clause is no longer enforceable. Crucially, the pet damage insurance provision that was in the original Bill was removed at Report Stage and is not in the final Act. You cannot require the tenant to take out pet insurance, cannot charge a pet fee, and cannot increase the deposit above the statutory five-week cap to cover the pet. Any damage at the end of the tenancy is recovered through the standard deposit deduction process, with your landlord insurance as a fallback. In practice: take pet requests on their merits. A working-age tenant with a well-trained adult dog in a two-bed terrace with a garden is usually a stronger covenant than they look on paper — most pet-owning tenants stay longer and accept slightly higher rents.

The only route to raise rent on a periodic tenancy is now a Section 13 notice. Contractual rent reviews are gone (along with fixed terms), and bilateral agreements to increase rent are unenforceable if they bypass the Section 13 mechanism. The rules: one increase per tenancy per year, with the first increase not taking effect until 12 months after the start of the tenancy. Two months' written notice on the prescribed form (Form 4A). The proposed rent must not exceed market rent for the property. The tenant has 21 days to refer the proposed rent to the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The tribunal can keep the rent at the existing level or set it lower than the proposed increase — it cannot, under the new regime, set it higher than the landlord asked for. This asymmetry changes the strategy: under the old rules a borderline-aggressive notice was occasionally worth it because the tribunal might split the difference upward; under the new rules a borderline-aggressive notice is downside-only. Set the increase to land slightly below comparable market evidence and the tribunal will uphold it. Set it above and the tenant can refer it at no cost, which delays any uplift and may reduce it. If you let with us, we benchmark every Section 13 against the live comparable evidence in our own letting data — for the property type, postcode, and condition. Most of our Section 13 notices go uncontested.

Two pieces of infrastructure that flow from the Act but aren't live on day one. The Private Rented Sector Database — the Property Portal. Mandatory registration for all PRS landlords in England. Regional rollout begins in late 2026 with full national mandatory registration during 2027. Each property and landlord will have an entry; certain compliance information will be visible to prospective tenants and to enforcement authorities. The annual fee per property is yet to be confirmed. The PRS Ombudsman. A single mandatory landlord redress scheme covering all assured tenancies. Implementation is expected in 2028 — the government has indicated the scheme administrator will be appointed first and given 12 to 18 months to scale up before mandatory landlord membership begins. Once live, every PRS landlord must be a member; the Ombudsman can order remedial action and financial awards. Until the Portal and Ombudsman are operational, the existing enforcement regime continues: local authorities under the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and the Housing Act 2004. Civil penalties under the new Act go up to £40,000 for the most serious offences, and rent repayment orders have been extended to cover the new criminal offences. What to do now: nothing structural. Keep your records and certificates tidy and be ready to register on the Portal when your region opens. We'll write to managed clients on the registration deadline as soon as the regional rollout schedule is confirmed.

A practical checklist for May 2026 onwards has only a handful of items, but each one matters. Start with your existing tenancies. All assured tenancies converted to assured periodic tenancies (APTs) on 1 May 2026; rent and other terms otherwise continue as before. Update your own records to reflect the new status — it matters for paperwork, possession applications, and any future Section 13 notices. Replace any standing tenancy agreement template that still references fixed terms, no-fault eviction, or contractual rent reviews. We use a fresh Renters' Rights Act-compliant template; the NRLA has one for members. Set up a written pet-request handling process. Twenty-eight days is the legal floor for a response, but aim for ten. Decide your default position on pets in advance — whether your insurance covers them, whether your superior lease allows them, what kinds of property are realistically suitable — so that an individual request doesn't catch you flat-footed. Audit your compliance certificates. Gas, EICR, EPC and deposit registration. If any are stale or missing, sort them before the next possession application or Section 13 notice — courts will check. Plan your Section 13 timings. One increase per tenancy per year, two months' notice, evidence-backed. The easiest discipline is to anchor it to the anniversary of move-in. Subscribe to gov.uk updates for the Property Portal rollout in your region. And finally, if you self-manage, consider honestly whether the procedural load has tipped the cost-benefit on management. We've been seeing a steady stream of switches in 2026 from landlords who self-managed comfortably before the Act came in and find the new regime more than they want to handle. For the tenant-side view of the same changes, see our [Renters' Rights Act guide for tenants](/guides/renters-rights-act-for-tenants).