The Renters' Rights Act: a landlord's operating checklist for 2026

What changed on 1 May 2026, and what did not

Phase 1 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 has been in force in England since 1 May 2026. It is not a consultation or a proposal. It is the law your tenancies run under today, whether or not your paperwork has caught up.

The headline is that section 21 "no fault" evictions are abolished. Fixed terms are replaced by Assured Periodic Tenancies. A tenant can stay until a valid section 8 ground applies, and can end the tenancy with two months' notice.

Around that sit the conduct rules. Rent can rise once a year, through the revised section 13 procedure. Rental bidding is banned, and you cannot take more than one month's rent in advance. Discrimination against renters with children or renters receiving benefits is unlawful, including withholding information, refusing viewings, or refusing a tenancy.

Enforcement is stronger too. Local authority powers are wider, civil penalties are expanded, rent repayment orders now reach superior landlords, and the maximum penalty has doubled.

What did not change: your safety obligations. Gas, electrical, EPC, alarm, deposit and Right to Rent duties all still apply exactly as before. The Act changes how a tenancy runs. It does not replace the certificates behind it.

The four changes that actually change your week

Most of the Act reads as policy. Four parts of it turn into work that lands on somebody's desk every week.

1. Periodic tenancies

There is no end date to plan around anymore. The tenancy continues until the tenant gives two months' notice or you have a valid section 8 ground. Renewal reminders built around fixed-term end dates are now reminders for something that no longer happens.

2. Section 13 rent increases

One increase a year, by the revised section 13 procedure, with at least two months' notice. That makes every rent increase a dated, notice-driven event that you have to be able to evidence.

3. No bidding, no more than one month in advance

Advertised rent is the rent. You cannot invite or accept offers above it, and you cannot take more than one month's rent upfront. Anyone who handles enquiries, including an agent, needs to know this.

4. Pets

A written request to keep a pet gets 28 days of consideration and, if refused, a valid reason. The risk here is not the decision. It is the request that sits in an inbox for five weeks.

The records that prove compliance

Compliance you cannot show is compliance you cannot rely on when it is questioned. For each tenancy, hold these, dated and findable:

• The tenancy itself: start date, parties, rent, and how it now sits as a periodic tenancy.
• Notices: every section 13 notice, with the date served and how it was served.
• Rent history: each rent figure and the date it took effect, so the once-a-year rule can be shown.
• Deposit: protected in a government-approved scheme within 30 days, with proof of the date.
• Prescribed information: a copy of what was served and when.
• Pet requests: date received, date answered, decision, and reason.

None of this is new paperwork. What changed is that the dates now matter more than they did.

What actually goes wrong: the two-month notice clock and the rent-increase diary

Two failures come up again and again, and neither is about not knowing the law.

The first is the notice clock. Two months is long enough to be forgotten. A tenant gives notice, it lands in a shared inbox, and nobody records the date. Six weeks later the property has no viewings booked and nobody is sure when the tenancy ends.

The second is the rent-increase diary nobody keeps. The once-a-year rule only works if you know when the last increase took effect. In a spreadsheet with one "current rent" column, that history is overwritten each time. When an increase is challenged, the evidence of the previous one has gone.

Both are the same problem: dates held in someone's head or overwritten in a cell, rather than recorded as events against the tenancy.

A compliance catch-up checklist

For a landlord who has not reviewed anything since 1 May 2026, in this order:

1. List every tenancy, with its start date and current rent.
2. For each, find the date of the last rent increase. If you cannot, record that you cannot.
3. Check that every deposit is protected and that prescribed information was served, with dates.
4. Remove anything from adverts or templates that invites offers above the asking rent.
5. Check that no tenancy takes more than one month's rent in advance going forward.
6. Check your screening and viewing process for anything that turns away renters with children or on benefits.
7. Set up a single place where tenant notices and pet requests are logged with the date received.
8. Replace fixed-term renewal reminders with a section 13 diary: earliest date for the next increase, and the notice deadline before it.
9. Check every safety certificate is current, because the PRS Database will ask for them.

Where the admin breaks at portfolio scale

One tenancy is a calendar entry. Thirty is a spreadsheet. A hundred and fifty is a data problem, not a diligence problem. Each tenancy now carries a rent-increase date, a notice deadline, any pet requests, a deposit record and its safety certificates, all on different cycles.

That is also why the PRS Database matters here. It asks for the same certificate and property data, per property, kept current. If the tenancy records and the certificate records live in different places, a landlord ends up reconciling them by hand.

The fix is not working harder. It is holding each obligation as a dated record against the property, so the next deadline is visible before it arrives. That is the approach behind our property compliance work.