Letting agent compliance in 2026: the checklist behind the checklist

Two different jobs: agency compliance and property compliance

A letting agency in England carries two kinds of compliance, and they are easy to blur together.

The first is agency compliance: the obligations that attach to the business itself. Client money protection, redress, client accounts, material information, and how the agency conducts lettings.

The second is property compliance: the obligations that attach to each managed property and tenancy. Gas safety, EICR, EPC, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, deposit protection, Right to Rent, and the How to Rent guide.

The landlord owns many of the property duties. The agent is often the one delivering them. Both jobs need a record, and the records rarely live in the same place.

Client money protection, client accounts, and the audit

An agency that handles client money needs three things in place.

• Client money protection scheme membership. This protects landlords' and tenants' money if something goes wrong at the agency.
• Client accounts. Client money held separately from the agency's own money.
• An annual audit where client money is held.

None of these is a one-off. Membership renews. The audit comes round every year. The evidence that each is in place should be findable without asking the one person who set it up.

Redress scheme membership

Agents must be members of a government-approved redress scheme: The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme. It gives tenants and landlords somewhere independent to take a complaint.

The obligation is simple. The failure mode is too: a membership that lapses at renewal because the reminder went to someone who has since left.

Material information: Parts A, B and C

The National Trading Standards estate and lettings agency guidance sets out material information in three parts. Together they cover what a prospective tenant needs to know before deciding.

That includes council tax, tenure, price or rent, physical characteristics, utilities, parking, restrictive covenants and flood risk, among other items.

The work is in holding it per property, keeping it accurate, and making sure every listing carries it. A listing written from memory, or copied from the last similar property, is where gaps appear.

Holding material information properly

Treat material information as data about the property, not as copy in a listing. Collect it once, store it against the property, and generate the listing from it. When something changes, such as the council tax band, the rent, or the parking arrangement, it changes in one place.

Some items are stable for years, like tenure and restrictive covenants. Others, like rent, change regularly. Knowing which is which tells you what needs checking before each new let and what can be carried forward.

What the Renters' Rights Act adds to agency conduct

Since 1 May 2026, phase 1 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 has changed how agencies run lettings in England:

• No rental bidding. The advertised rent is the rent. Do not invite or accept offers above it.
• No more than one month's rent in advance.
• No discrimination against renters with children or receiving benefits, including withholding information, refusing viewings, or refusing a tenancy.

These rules apply at the front desk, by phone and in every email. Listing templates, viewing scripts and referencing criteria all need checking against them. Look in particular for:

• Listing wording that invites offers, or describes rent as negotiable upwards.
• Template tenancy terms that ask for several months' rent upfront.
• Screening questions or filters that turn away renters with children or receiving benefits before a viewing.

Every person who answers an enquiry is applying these rules, whether they know it or not. The Renters' Rights Act checklist covers the landlord side of the same changes.

What actually goes wrong: the compliance pack that lives in four places

Ask an agency to produce the full compliance pack for one managed property, and watch where people look.

• The gas safety record is in the inbox of whoever booked the engineer.
• The EICR is in a shared drive folder named after the landlord, not the property.
• The deposit certificate is in the scheme's portal.
• The alarm test is a tick on a check-in sheet, scanned to a PDF.

Each document exists. Together they do not form a record. Nobody can say, without an hour of searching, whether the gas record reached the tenant within 28 days, or whether the EICR copy went to the new tenant before they moved in.

The same is true of agency compliance. The CMP certificate, the redress membership and the audit report each live with a different person. When one renewal is missed, nobody notices until someone asks for it.

Building one record per property that satisfies both jobs

The fix is structural: one record per property that holds the property obligations, and one record for the agency that holds the agency obligations. Every certificate, check and notice sits against the property it belongs to, with its date, its expiry, and proof of delivery to the tenant.

For each managed property, that record should show:

• Gas safety record (where there is a gas or LPG appliance), its date, and when it went to the tenant.
• EICR, its date, and when it went to the tenant.
• EPC and its expiry.
• Smoke and CO alarm tests on the day each tenancy started, with evidence the test happened.
• Deposit protection within 30 days, and the prescribed information served.
• Right to Rent checks before the tenancy (an England requirement), copies retained, and follow-up dates where permission is time-limited.
• The How to Rent guide version given at the start of an AST.

Held that way, the pack is one click rather than four inboxes, and the next expiry is visible before it lapses. That is the problem our property compliance work exists to solve.